The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture and Design

The New Curator: Exhibiting Architecture and Design examines the challenges inherent in exhibiting design ideas. Traditionally, exhibitions of architecture and design have predominantly focused on displaying finished outcomes or communicating a work through representation. In this ground-breaking new book, Fleur Watson unveils the emergence of the 'new curator'. Instead of exhibiting finished works or artefacts, the rise of 'performative curation' provides a space where experimental methods for encountering design ideas are being tested. Here, the role of the curator is not that of 'custodian' or 'expert' but with the intent to create a shared space of encounter with audiences. To illustrate this phenomenon, the book explores a diverse, international range of exhibitions. Divided into six themes, a series of project profiles are contextualized through conversations with influential curators and cultural producers such as Paola Antonelli, Kayoko Ota, Mimi Zeiger, Catherine Ince, Aric Chen, Zoë Ryan, Beatrice Leanza, Prem Krishnamurthy, Marina Otero Verzier, Brook Andrew, Carroll Go-Sam, Rory Hyde, Eva Franch i Gilabert, Patti Anahory and Paula Nascimento. Featuring over 100 color illustrations, this highly designed, beautiful book offers an innovative contribution to the field. An essential read for students and professionals in architecture, design, art, visual culture, museum studies, curatorial studies and cultural theory. The book also features a foreword by Deyan Sudjic and an afterword by Leon van Schaik AO.

Fleur Watson is Executive Director and Chief Curator for the Centre for Architecture Victoria | Open House Melbourne. From 2012-20, Fleur was Curator at Design Hub Gallery, an exhibition space dedicated to cross-disciplinary design exchange and practice-led research at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. She has held senior curatorial positions in Australia and internationally including as the founding executive curator of the Lyon Housemuseum Galleries; architecture curator for the National Gallery of Victoria's survey exhibition Melbourne Now (2013-14) and program curator (architecture) for the European Capital of Culture (Maribor, Slovenia, 2012). She was a co-founder of the independent gallery Pin-up Architecture & Design Project Space and former editor-in-chief of Monument magazine.

Foreword: Deyan Sudjic Introduction: Fleur Watson 1. Design as Exhibit: (Curator as Space-maker) 2. The Prosthetic: (Curator as Interloper) 3. The Mediator of Process / Research: (Curator as Translator) 4. The Hybrid to the Digital: (Curator as Speculator) 5. The Advocate/Activist: (Curator as Agent) 6. The Event as Performance: (Curator as Dramaturge) Conclusion: The New Curator: Towards a Specialised Practice Afterword: Professor Leon van Schaik AO Selected Bibliography Credits and Acknowledgements Index