Curatorial Project: May You Live in Interesting Times.
You serve on the advisory board for the Venice Biennale and you have been asked to curate a space using the work of three artists, each of whom works in a different medium (painting, sculpture, photography, new media, installation, performance, or conceptual art). Select between 3-5 works and explain how they fit with the theme for 2019, May You Live in Interesting Times. Start by reading Ralph Rugoff’s essay about the theme for 2019 linked below. Mr. Rugoff curated this year’s biennale and the essay should help guide your thinking about which artists to include. You may not include any of the artworks that are included in the Biennale this year, you may include different works by one of the artists that are featured. You are also allowed to select the work of deceased artists; you are not required to only include contemporary artists. https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2019/introduction-ralph-rugoff (Links to an external site.) Research your artworks. You will need to provide “wall text” for each artwork that provides the artist’s name, the title, and date of the artwork, and the medium in which it is made. In addition to the wall text, you need to prepare a short essay to accompany each work of art to help the viewers understand your curatorial selections. This means that you will describe, analyze and interpret the formal properties of the work. You will want to discuss the materials the artist uses, the palette, composition, scale, any sound elements, texture, site-specificity—whatever is relevant to your understanding of the piece. You will also want to explain what style of art the work falls under and how this particular style might have been influenced by earlier artists or art movements. You will need to place the artwork in its social, political, and historical context. How does the artwork reflect the time and culture in which it was made? You will also need to explain how the work reflects the personal style of the artist and how the artist’s biography might have influenced this style. These focused analyses should be 400-500 words each. Once you have written about each piece and how it connects to the theme May You Live In Interesting Times, you need to write a 250-word essay that explains how the three works you selected to play off each other, complement each other, or provided needed contrast to one another. How does the cumulative power of the works help to develop the theme even more than they would if they simply stood in isolation from one another?