János György Szoboszlai (1967) is an art historian and curator. He holds a Ph.D. in art history (Originality and Appropriation in the Post-2nd WW Visual Art in Central-Eastern Europe, 2003). Since 2009 he has been the Head of the Department of Contemporary Art Theory and Curatorial Studies at the University of Fine Arts, Budapest, teaching exhibition-, curatorial- and museum studies, cultural policy, and management. He also teaches contemporary art and curatorial studies at the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústi nad Labem, Czech Republic. Previously he worked as a coordinator for the Soros Center for Contemporary Art, Budapest (1995–97); the director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaujvaros (1997–2001); a special visiting lecturer at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago (for the MA in Arts Administration programme 2001–2002). He managed his own contemporary art gallery (2003–2009). In 2014–2015 he was a member of the curatorial team of the first OFF Biennale – Budapest.
A Few Notes on Mediation and Discursivity in Contemporary Curatorial Practices
Keynote speech for the conference panel
Medium As a Message in Visual Arts
Museum handbooks argue that “exhibitions primarly deal with the physical aspects of things, and even if interpretation is excellent, exhibitions do not afford a complete source of information. Exhibitions can be made to work for any subject, but reasonable and practical considerations about appropriateness, levels of commitment, and the value of the exhibit to the public should be throughly thought out before choosing that medium of communication.” Therefore an exhibition on one hand presents the „real thing” in a real space, and on the other – especially in the case of thematic group exhibitions -, it is a bricollage, uncompleted in nature. Last decades this medium was affected in many ways, for example by the emergence of new museology, the curatorial and educational turns, the participatory and collaborative practices in contemporary art, new technologies that support suitable interpretation, and various interdisciplinary approaches in the curatorial practice.
Aiming to create an appropriate space for contextualization and interpretation, moreover in accordance with these turns and shifts, curators supply their exhibitions with additional mediums and instruments of discourse. Round tables; gallery talks; symposia; workshops; lectures; upstream and downstream events; publications of various forms and contents for various target groups; and many other mediums and instruments have become compulsory components of curatorial projects. The digital technology, mainly the internet and the web2 (social media) speeded up and broadened this shift in discursivity. Being mediums of communication, exhibitions have become complex mediums of the discourse.
The unprecedented quarantine of the first half of 2020 not only forced public and private art organizations to go on-line, but led to some unexpected results in the methodology and operation of museums, exhibition spaces, galleries, art fairs, the art press, and art education. Existing methods may have become more fashionable (on-line gallery tour); new mediums have emerged (on-line exhibition and viewing room); new constructions for selling art have been introduced (new platforms for artists to sell art and support one another during the post-pandemic recovery).
Therefore it seems that it would be worth to spend some time together and draw up extended definitions for exhibition, display, presentation of art, mediation, and discursivity in contemporary curatorial practices. There are many study cases around. Also it seems neccessary to face the challenge of the demand for professionalisation and „industrialisation” of communication of the art organizations.
Finally, we should have a look at the old story: who is the audience, and how to approach audience development? Museums and exhibitions lost 80% of their audience. Art organizations just started to measure and evaluate this process. Who are the on-line viewers? What can we tell about this new audience? How will this shift affect the exhibition making routines and the curatorial practice?