Curating with Counterpowers

Abstract

This article examines the turn in Anglophone protest cultures since 2007 toward curating, museums, and heritage: a rise in the toppling of statues, demonstrations inside museums, and the creation of exhibitions, displays, and archives within the ephemeral spaces of protest camps and other mobilizations. The author argues for the historical causes of this curatorial turn in movement cultures, examines the structural power dynamics of this extrainstitutional curating vis-à-vis the practices and policies of cultural institutions, and puts these developments in critical dialogue with recent debates on “activist curating” and “institutional liberation.” Lastly, drawing on this analysis and firsthand experiences on both sides of this dynamic (as a core member of the collective Liberate Tate and as cocurator of the V&A exhibition Disobedient Objects), the author assesses this trajectory's potentials and limits as a cultural strategy for social change.