Project #5: You’re the Curator!

DUE: 12/09

For your final project, you will take-on the role of curator. We have gone to a number of institutions this semester. Every exhibition represents the work of an individual curator. The curator selects which artists will be exhibited, which of their artworks will be shown, and where the work will be installed within the layout of the gallery.

The premise of this exercise is that you have just been hired as a new curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Since we live in a digital age, (and this is your first job) you have been assigned to curate an online exhibition of work from the Met’s collection. You may choose from their 5,000+ years of art objects. To find your images, you will go to the museum’s website and browse their collection. Their entire collection of objects (!) is available online at http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/ You may browse by Department (Modern Art, European Paintings, etc…) or by Keywords (artist’s name, titles of work, description, etc…). Begin a folder on your hard drive to collect and sort any images that peak your interest. It is better to start with too-many images than with not-enough!

First, you will need to create a descriptive theme for your exhibit. Since this project is connected to your Field Trip #6 Reaction, this will be the same theme as your writing. Your theme can be medium-specific, like, “Oil Paintings from the Collection of the Metropolitan”, or it can be content-specific, like, “Depictions of Pets Throughout the History of Art”.

From here, you need to select fifteen works of art. It is best to accumulate more than the fifteen images, though, so that you have more to choose from. Part of the curator’s job is that of quality control. The works that you choose need to best represent your ideas, and also represent what you believe to be the interests of the museum. As with your reaction paper, these images must represent at least 3 additional sections of the museum.

To present your Curatorial Project, you will need to create a new post in Blogger. You can include both your writing and your project in one blog entry. Here is the layout order for your blog content, as well as the formatting requirements:

1) The title of your new blog needs to be the descriptive theme of your exhibit.

2) Next, paste the text of your curatorial statement/Field Trip #6 Reaction.

3) After your statement, insert the 15 images in the order that you want them to be viewed. Each of these images should be upload to Blogger as “Medium Sized”

4) Finally, underneath each image, you must include a line of info in this order:

Artist’s Name, “Title of Work” (in quotations), year completed, and section of museum.