Curatorship
This programme was closed in 2012.
The Curatorship programme was initiated in 2007 with the objective of developing the discourse and discipline of curation in India and generating critical pedagogies sensitive to different regions in India. The programme was supported by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust in its first two years.
It was started in collaboration with four nodal centres—Khoj International Artists' Association, New Delhi; Centre for Culture, Media and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia; Katha Centre for Film Studies, Mumbai; and the Association of Academics, Artists and Citizens for University Autonomy, Vadodara—each bringing a distinct richness of experience and expertise to the programme.
A significant outcome of the programme was the preparation towards an extensive curriculum on curation drawing from five thematic workshops and colloquiums held across different regions in India. Another important outcome was the establishment of a website curateart.in which draws from the rich materials gathered and generated through the programme, with the objective of making knowledge freely accessible to the public and research communities.
Between 2007 and 2012 the programme supported five grants.
It closed in 2012, having completed some of its objectives, due to lack of funding. However, the impulse of making an impact on the practice of curatorship in the country, as embodied by the Curatorship programme, gave rise to the Archival and Museum Fellowships (2011-2018).
Seminars/Conferences:
October 19 & 22, 2010 | 6th Asian Museum Curators Conference (AMCC) | Delhi & Bangalore
The 6th Asian Museum Curators Conference Curatorship: From Empire to Republic proposed to address the dialectic relationship between curatorial practice and spectatorship in Asia by investigating the politics of how curators today historicise collections, engage the mainstream and the alternative, and navigate design as an embedded technology and an ideological apparatus. This concept was developed in collaboration with Annapurna Garimella (Managing Trustee, Art Resources and Teaching Trust, Bangalore) who was also appointed conference moderator. Thus, as the conference examined the changing and differing methods of curatorial practice, within public and private institutions; and alternative/independent initiatives, it also reflected upon how the role of the curator has radically shifted over the years - from institutional intellectual to global art superstar. Additionally, the complexities and expectations of considering the general public in a museums programming, was discussed at length by many of the participants.