Today we’re taking a closer look at an emerging practice in curation and sharing resources on its implementation. But first, definitions: What exactly is collaborative curation and how might your museum benefit from it?
At its core, collaborative curation involves curators working alongside community members, artists, or other stakeholders to develop new exhibitions. In contrast to the traditional top-down model, collaborative curation embraces participatory methods and allows for different perspectives to shape the narrative.
And though collaborative curation isn’t a new concept, it continues to gain traction, particularly as the role of museum curator evolves:
In today’s fast-paced world, museums are no longer static repositories; they have become vibrant centres for dialogue, exchange, and research. As these institutions transform, curators find themselves at the nexus of change, necessitating an expanded skill set encompassing networking and storytelling. The curator’s role has broadened, intertwining with public engagement, interdisciplinary collaborations, and the dissemination of reliable information. (Source: The Evolving Role of Museum Curators: A Paradigm Shift in Cultural Stewardship)
Think of collaborative curation as another tool in the curatorial toolbox, one that democratizes the storytelling process. Other broad benefits:
- Communities feel a deeper, more personal connection to your museum (which can pave the way for other good things).
- You’re able to present multiple angles on a single topic.
- Co-creating with communities brings relevance to contemporary audiences.
Resources for Implementing Collaborative Curation in Museums
Because community curation or collaborative curation is a bit different from the norm, it helps to learn from those who have gone before us. Fortunately, quite a few folks have worked to document processes and develop guidelines. Let’s explore some of the resources available to you.
The Tucson Museum of Art put pen to paper and created a roadmap for other museums: Community-Based Curation: A Toolkit for Expanding Narratives and Changing Practices is full of “detailed accounts — and resulting strategies — of the implementation and practice of community-based curation at TMA as well as lessons learned along the way.”
You’ve likely heard of The Participatory Museum by Nina Simon. She’s been doing legwork on this topic since pre-2010, and you can read the book online at the link or purchase it as a paperback. Chapters 7 and 8 are particularly instructional and include case studies from different types of museums.
One word that comes up a lot in collaborative curation is “radical.” Bringing in outside entities to help guide the ship can be difficult; long-running co-creation programs ALL note this. As Simon notes, it requires radical trust. She gives a lot of space in her book to the Wing Luke Museum, an institution that exclusively uses co-creation for exhibitions:
The Wing Luke community process is simple to understand and hard to implement. Their handbook reads like a Zen koan: “The work is labor intensive. The work requires flexibility. We willingly relinquish control.”
Don’t let that scare you! Co-creation for exhibitions requires flexing different muscles, yes, but the results can be wonderful. Here’s a lively example from the National Museum of Wildlife Art.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History brought together a group almost five times the size of their entire staff to create We’re Still Here, an exhibition on a single issue — social isolation in seniors. Find out the lessons they learned and the framework they developed, namely the five key steps they used to raise community voices in a thoughtful and intentional manner while co-creating: Radical Exhibitions: Uplifting Community Voices (links to a recorded talk with transcript).
The School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe created the SAR Guidelines for Collaboration, a comprehensive tool to guide collaboration with Native American communities. It can also be broadly used for collaboration with other communities that have cultural materials in a museum’s care.
Additional recommended read: Building True, Lasting Collaborations with Source Communities, AAM
A Museum Without Walls: Community Collaboration in Exhibition Development delves into how the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art invited local community members to select artworks from the collection, which were then “liberated” from the walls and reproduced in public spaces throughout the city. The article describes specifics of the collaborative process and how the museum had to adapt the project to better represent the perspectives of the diverse communities.
Amid a push to become more family friendly, the Clyfford Still Museum co-created an exhibition with very young children, Clyfford Still, Art, and the Young Mind, a project that had little historical precedent. In their words:
We did not want audiences to say, “How cute; babies picked the art!” Instead, we hoped visitors would think critically about museum practice and leave the exhibition with a new understanding of young children as engaged community members capable of constructing the world around them.
The paper linked above has details on exhibition goals, identifying prospective partners, and reflections along the way (“Since this exhibition is geared towards early learners, keeping in mind CSM’s vast majority of visitors — adults — was tricky…”). Here’s an excellent wrap-up to the project, with even more insights, published on the AAM Alliance Blog: “Wait, What? Toddlers in an Art Museum?”
Further reading: Design Anthropological Approaches in Collaborative Museum Curation examines the importance of participatory activities when curating exhibitions on complex and sensitive topics like scientific racism.
Challenges and Considerations
This approach obviously requires a very different development process. Balancing diverse opinions, ensuring equitable participation, and simply working with people outside your organization is a complex endeavor. You have to get your mind around shared authority and taking on a more facilitative role. There are also cost and time considerations. Here are some basic differences from curator-led development:
- Expect extended project timelines.
- Building relationships and communicating effectively with all parties will require customized workflows particular to your project.
- True collaboration requires ongoing interaction with community members — meetings, consultations, feedback sessions, all of which take time.
- Those outreach and coordination efforts will require an extra layer of administrative support.
- Ethical collaboration means compensating community members for their expertise and time.
- Given the increased demands list above, you may need to secure external funding.
The good news is that museum pros are talking about the challenges. All the resources in this article speak to adaptations and pivots and difficulties you might encounter. Being aware will make things less daunting.
Could your museum stand to be more ingrained with the communities in your city? How might the stories you tell change if you embrace collaborative curation? What untold narratives will come to light?
