Curating the virtual museum
Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition: Curatorial Design for the Multimedial Museum
The impact of digital technologies on art is becoming increasingly clear. Now, a new book examines the influence of these technologies on exhibition and the role of the curator in the age of the multimedia museum.
Launched at last week's Museums and the Web 2012 Conference in San Diego, California, Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition: Curatorial Design for the Multimedial Museum is the first book by Dr Vince Dziekan of Monash University’s Faculty of Art Design & Architecture.
In his work, Dr Dziekan examines how digital technologies are guiding the curatorial strategies of contemporary art museums. Designed around contextual studies of virtuality and exhibition, this interdisciplinary volume highlights the role of practice-based research, which Dr Dziekan applies to a range of topics, including digital mediation, spatial practice, the multimedial museum, and curatorial design.
"The time-honoured role of the curator is changing, in part because the world and cultural context around them is changing," Dr Dziekan said.
"In the age of social media, where anyone can lay claim to being a content curator, the authority of the curator as expert has been challenged – but this can actually be quite liberating to how curators now go about their work and opens up new opportunities to collaborate with artists and develop exciting new platforms and contexts.”
Dr Dziekan said the designers of exhibitions were finding innovative ways to explore how the digital and spatial realms can become more closely integrated.
“The popularity of platforms such as the iPod and the iPad have certainly had significant impact on how museums approach the process of interpretation and audience access,” Dr Dziekan said.
"As a consequence, the skill sets that a contemporary curator needs are widening. What remains fundamental, however, is the role curating plays in mediating the dynamic relationships that an exhibition brings between artwork, space and audience."
Dr Dziekan recently co-produced the exhibition The World Is Everything That Is The Case that was presented as the Australian representation at ISEA2011 in Istanbul and part of the parallel program of the 12th Istanbul Biennial – one of the world’s leading international showcases for contemporary art. The project is being restaged at John Curtin Gallery in Perth for a national audience.
He has research affiliations with the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, the Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT) in Liverpool, UK and is Digital Media Curator of The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA).
Virtuality and the Art of Exhibition: Curatorial Design for the Multimedial Museum is published by Intellect and available through Amazon.