Curation Importance

Importance of Curated Exhibits

Being an artist myself, I never truly gotten the chance to curate a live museum opening nor an event, other than volunteering for a short amount of time during the summer of 2019.  No, being behind the canvas I generally provide my story clearly and up close and personal with the art.   Doing a digital curation, gave me quite a bit to think about as well as consider when thinking about how I’d want to represent the artist that I’ve never even gotten the chance to meet.  Especially with them being deceased, I wanted to proceed respectfully and give the artwork as much view time and exposure as possible for the artist and audience.  And despite the various tablets of information I found with the websites I searched up for Minnie Evans, no greater spectacle or speckle of understanding could be pronounced or deduced from her life without either looking at her acclaimed artwork simultaneously, or afterwards.  It is such a breath of fresh air when one doesn’t have to continue to rely on imagination in order to put pieces of a puzzle together, or understand the artwork labeled as visions and dreams from an artist.  Seeing is believing and this is why this curation event can and will help more people discover Minnie Evans like they never could before (with heavy consideration to the limitations of online curating events than the ones that occurred in person).  Referencing the trite quote once again, seeing truly is believing and without being able to perceive and make judgements for ourselves, and have to rely on the description of something by someone else, the experience is massively watered down and inherently tailored to bias based off of a person’s personal experiences whether that be consciously done or subconsciously done.  Either way, the experience must be had by the individual and said individual alone, so that they may form their own biases and own opinions about the work and experience in real time the multiple amounts of emotions they endured and went through while exploring the artwork.  Such as watching a movie for the first time or finishing an exciting graphic novel, it would never be the same if someone were to explain it to you albeit excitedly or unfortunately negatively because they hated it.  That’s the beauty in curating, it gives curators the opportunities to tell stories with work that though they may have had no hand in creating, provide their own frame of mind and unique storytelling methods and structural presentation to respectfully show the artist and their work off to a freshly picked and wonderous audience, to either enjoy or not enjoy, but in any case, have a response to the stimulus nonetheless.  Whether said art comes from famous painters, or people from less fortunate neighborhoods, to the middle and high class, to the incarcerated.  Wherever they hail from, their story is equally important to be shown off and told, and their legacies to be handled with the upmost care by those who advocate to represent them and their art form when they are not present.  Every artist’s voice counts.