This blog will now take a change of tack. After Breaking the Rules we have decided to develop the theme of curatorship in the 21st century. In a curious way there are connections: the avant garde faced the challenge of new technologies - car, plane, telegram, telephone, radio, cinema etc. We face the Web, Web 2.0, ubiquitous mobile telephony etc.
In 2003 I began a project at the British Library to re-invigorate curatorship at the British Library British Library website 2008 or rather I should link to an earlier version of the site British Library website 2004 The challenge was to see if the 130 or so staff who described themselves as curators - often a mix of librarians, archivists, academics and museum-style curators (and sometimes in the same person) - were punching their weight in research, acquiring new skills (digitisation, writing for the web et.) and passing on to possible successors increasingly rare skills which were disappearing from the library school curriculum (paleography, historical bibliography etc.), not to mention knowledge of specialised areas of the collections. They had to understand our audiences and relate to other professionals within the Library - in marketing, the Development Office, and our operational departments. A closed conference at New York Public Library, sponsored and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation brought together a largely Transatlantic group of managers and curators from archives and museums as well as libraries: there were issues common to us all and we could learn from one another. New York Conference 2004
The research piece was perhaps the easiest to do: we have established a research register, research breaks and attained Independent Research Organisation status with the Arts & Humanities Research Council AHRC The staff development programme has included workshops on AHRC processes, copyright, exhibition planning, Web 2.0, managing a university, identifying printmaking processes etc. But cultural change has been slower.
Meanwhile, I have been quite busy. I was the respondent to a paper by Joanna Drucker at the Tate, organised by the University of the Creative Arts, called the Liquid Page,ostensibly about the artist's book in the digital age. The next day I went up to Jack's Art Monthly lunch-time party in South Hampstead - he's selling up so I wonder what will happen to the Sol LeWitt mural - will he have to paint out and recreate elsewhere - I wonder what a future archaeologist will make of it. Then it's off to the Royal College of Art - it's part two: the product design includes roll-up pckaging, a water-powered radio for the shadow and a toilet that recycles waste into cooking oil. But I'm here to see Annabel's work - an intriguing story of the search for lost history and its displacement through archives, libraries and museums. annabel's website. Next day, Sunday, it's madrigals in Nunhead. I get there a little early and visit the cemetery - it's a wildlife sanctuary too. Friends of Nunhead Cemetery It's near the station for easy access. Today it's very green and very windy - almost like Brockley Park in the Antonioni film 'Blow Up'.