In 2021, I was awarded a California Arts Council Emerging Artist Fellowship to curate Grow Our Souls. The exhibition took place April 30 to May 22, 2022, in partnership with the Asian-Pacific Islander Cultural Center, at SOMArts Gallery in San Francisco, CA. You can see more at www.growoursoulsexhibition.com.
Here are five steps I recommend for an emerging curator:
Identify your goals (and how you will measure them)
Shape a vision (the premise for your prospectus)
Scope the project (timeline, plans, logistics, comms, documentation, resources)
Hire experts to help
Lead with equanimity
Identify your goals (and how you will measure them)
There are many types of shows and why they’re held. Do you want to promote works and sell them? Do you want to elevate community stories? Do you want to uplift artists and their narratives?
During the pandemic, we saw spikes in anti-Asian violence. In the arts world, there was a reckoning as white-led institutions began to talk about institutionalized racism.
At that moment, I wanted to execute an artist-driven exhibition, for Asian/Asian-American artists, by an Asian-American curator. In fact, this was also expressed in my CAC grant.
I wanted to set a higher bar for wages. I wanted to give opportunities to women and queer artists, knowing that art opportunities are statistically scarcer. So many of my questions where tailored for what artists wanted that I simply asked them in a Google survey.
I also had them score their goals, which helped me prioritize later on (see below).
All these goals were set in my creative brief so they could be shared with future designers (e.g., marketing, website, etc).
Shape Your Vision
.My vision went hand-in-hand with identifying my goals. It was the “why” to my “what” and “how.” What themes emerged from the work that I was interested in? Why?
I wrote an initial draft and submitted it to Root Division in 2020. Someone provided feedback and said that it seemed like all of the works that I was interested in was labor-intensive. It was true. We were deep in the throes of the pandemic, no end in sight. Wealthy nations sat tight, fast-tracking vaccine development for themselves, as the rest of the world floundered in terror.
This was the apogee/nadir of capitalism (at its finest or worst?). And the resurgence of anti-Asian violence dredged up centuries-old biases about cheap labor. Curious, I wanted to see what artists were thinking, making and talking about in regards to some of these themes.
I started with a few artists I knew, and sourced others based on referrals. The vision evolved over 1.5 years, up to two months before the show, when I finally saw all the proposed artworks.
Scope Your Project
After all that, your work has just begun. Someone told me that most art exhibitions take 1-2 years to execute, with 2 years for catalogs (printed publications). Goal- and vision-setting helped me identify the space, budget and support I wanted.
What is a project scope? It’s the time, resources and steps that need to be taken to complete a project. Usually, if you are working with multiple stakeholders, this requires a robust timeline and a project plan so there are no bottlenecks (e.g., when someone goes on leave or cannot answer a question).
Time
While I projected 171 curatorial hours for an exhibition (that included website design and an opening night event), the overall project took 4x to complete. Note: As a former designer, we doubled our projected timeline anytime we worked with new stakeholders. With new processes, that timeline went up 3-4x.
The biggest time-suck was artist administration (managing artists), followed by organizational or partner communication due to lack of documentation and processes. Important: Ask for documentation of processes upfront so there is transparency on steps and requirements. While full-time employees are paid overtime, freelancers are not. Thus, changes in the scope of work, including extra steps on the day of, can lead to extra work / (unpaid labor).
Resources
Resources are people, documentation, anything that will help you complete your project. This can include (but is not limited to):
Spatial or technical logistics (equipment details, floorplan with list of walls or pedestals, gallery and installation guidelines)
Templates (marketing, website, etc)
Contracts/agreements
People! Volunteers, organizational members, etc
Depending on your works, the more information the better. For site-specific installations, you will need to know what you can and cannot do in the gallery. Dimensions and a floor plan are essential for commissions or new works. For media, you will need to know what video projectors and/or sound equipment is available.
Ensure you have access to all documentation so there is no need for in-person meetings. Documentation captures a process so there are no questions about who owns what.
Plan
A curator will need a floorplan. See mine below (note: you probably only need the one with images):
Artist profiles/information. I used Airtable to gather mine, but many use Google forms.
Scope of work. If you have a contract with an organization, be sure to flesh it out as detailed as possible to see what you’re capable of as well as what you’re being paid for. Some exhibition managers will take on marketing and documentation of the show. Once you clarify this, you’ll know who to hire.
Hire Experts to Help
For the show, I sourced two website editors and an installation assistant. I highly recommend a curatorial assistant if you don’t have a program manager. I had both the APICC director and program manager providing support and was able to find additional volunteers to lead/execute a community mural activity.
Lead with Equanimity
While working on this show, I had artists or designers taking care of sick family members, conflicting shows and moving/financial struggles. I was personally diagnosed with a chronic illness. Some described me as “dishonest” because I canceled or shortened meetings due to doctor’s visits. Note: Disability is a protected status and if we worked at the same company, it would not be legal for anyone to pressure me to disclose my status.
In situations like these, I use situational leadership. If feedback is non-actionable (not specific or measurable, as in “you are x” vs “you did x which caused y. How can we accomplish z?”), then there is no measure of recourse. It may be a sign that your collaborator is not invested in making the relationship work.
As a freelancer, your time is incredibly important (and costly!). The time you spend coaching someone is time being taken away from the rest of the show. Thus:
Artist-driven goals are objective rationale for what to focus on when life gets messy
Shared documentation (meeting notes, basically any kind of working doc) provides transparency on decisions and changes
In Unnameable, Susette Min’s book on Asian-American art, she describes curators as “cultural gatekeepers.” Curation is a labor-intensive and at times, difficult task, but does the much needed world-changing work of promoting stories, engaging with top-of-mind issues and offering the community a chance to see art in new ways.
Do you have any questions about curating your first art show? Ask below.