Curating Expertise: An Anthropological Approach

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of the expertise of UK-based contemporary art curators using an anthropological approach. By engaging with anthropology’s methodological and ethnographic promise, this thesis explores the lived experiences of UK-based professional contemporary art curators. It will consider their professional knowledge, identity, and practice for the purpose of illuminating their expertise.

An extensive ethnographic and anthropological study of contemporary art curators in the UK does not currently exist. By extension, there are very few examples of ethnographic studies of contemporary art curators generally. Art curators do not feature within anthropological studies of professionals or indeed more widely within industry-focused literature, for example.

Through taking an ethnographic approach, the thesis sheds light on the everyday lives of contemporary art curators in the UK. Moving beyond a generalised focus on curatorial narratives as ‘discourse’, it aims to reveal a more nuanced version of their professional expertise that. These situated examples will demonstrate the types of contradictions, ethical dilemmas, ideological aspirations, and personal aspects that reside in the everyday lives of UK-based contemporary art
curators. Therefore, this thesis will provide novel perspectives on their practices and sociality, with a focus on the professional culture of curators that constructs art.

Building on anthropological approaches to expert knowledge and professional culture, this research sheds new light on professional narratives surrounding the curatorial profession. A consideration through the lens of social anthropology of UK-based contemporary art curators in their metamorphic state, provides an ideal opportunity by which to consider the impacts of professional narratives, and to make a case for a different way of thinking, predicated on a consideration of
curatorial expertise based upon ethnographic insights into their everyday lives.