The New Curator Exhibiting

Architecture and Design 1st Edition

Fleur Watson
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-new-curator-exhibiting-architecture-and-design-1s
t-edition-fleur-watson/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

An Architecture of Education African American Women

Design the New South 1st Edition Angel David Nieves

https://ebookmeta.com/product/an-architecture-of-education-
african-american-women-design-the-new-south-1st-edition-angel-
david-nieves/

Spatial Design Education New Directions for Pedagogy in

Architecture and Beyond 1st Edition Ashraf M. Salama

https://ebookmeta.com/product/spatial-design-education-new-
directions-for-pedagogy-in-architecture-and-beyond-1st-edition-
ashraf-m-salama/

The Philosophy Of Online Manipulation 1st Edition Fleur

Jongepier

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-philosophy-of-online-
manipulation-1st-edition-fleur-jongepier/

Beauty Matters Human Judgement and the Pursuit of New

Beauties in Post Digital Architecture Architectural
Design 1st Edition Yael Reisner

https://ebookmeta.com/product/beauty-matters-human-judgement-and-
the-pursuit-of-new-beauties-in-post-digital-architecture-
architectural-design-1st-edition-yael-reisner/
SOLID The Software Design and Architecture Handbook
Khalil Stemmler

https://ebookmeta.com/product/solid-the-software-design-and-
architecture-handbook-khalil-stemmler-2/

SOLID The Software Design and Architecture Handbook

Khalil Stemmler

https://ebookmeta.com/product/solid-the-software-design-and-
architecture-handbook-khalil-stemmler/

Non Design Architecture Liberalism and the Market 1st

Edition Anthony Fontenot

https://ebookmeta.com/product/non-design-architecture-liberalism-
and-the-market-1st-edition-anthony-fontenot/

Help Digital Humanitarianism and the Remaking of

International Order 1st Edition Fleur Johns

https://ebookmeta.com/product/help-digital-humanitarianism-and-
the-remaking-of-international-order-1st-edition-fleur-johns/

Cloud Native Architecture and Design: A Handbook for

Modern Day Architecture and Design with Enterprise-
Grade Examples 1st Edition Shivakumar R Goniwada

https://ebookmeta.com/product/cloud-native-architecture-and-
design-a-handbook-for-modern-day-architecture-and-design-with-
enterprise-grade-examples-1st-edition-shivakumar-r-goniwada/
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
fnished 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 fnished 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 profles are contextualized through conversations with infuential
curators and cultural producers including 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. The book also features a foreword by Deyan Sudjic and an
afterword by Leon van Schaik AO.
Featuring over 100 colour illustrations, this highly designed,
beautiful book offers an innovative contribution to the feld. An essential
read for students and professionals in architecture, design, art, visual
culture, museum studies, curatorial studies and cultural theory.

Dr Fleur Watson is Executive Director and Chief Curator for the Centre
for Architecture Victoria | Open House Melbourne. From 2013–20, 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, where she is Honorary University
Fellow. She has held senior curatorial positions in Australia and
internationally including as the founding executive curator of the Lyon
Housemuseum Galleries; invited 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.
First published 2021

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2021 Fleur Watson

The right of Fleur Watson to be identifed as author of this work has been asserted
by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent
to infringe.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher
of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions.

Publisher’s Note
This book has been prepared from camera-ready copy provided by the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Watson, Fleur, author.
Title: The new curator : exhibiting architecture and design / Fleur Watson.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2021. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2020050061 (print) | LCCN 2020050062 (ebook) | ISBN
9781138492721 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138492738 (paperback) | ISBN
9781351029827 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Design--Exhibitions. | Architecture--Exhibitions. |
Curatorship.
Classifcation: LCC NK1520 .W38 2021 (print) | LCC NK1520 (ebook) | DDC
745.4074--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050061
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020050062

ISBN: 978-1-138-49272-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-49273-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-02982-7 (ebk)

Book designed and typeset by Stuart Geddes.

Typeset in Plantin, Akzidenz Grotesk and Staunch Titling.
 Exhibiting
Architecture
& Design

Fleur
Watson
Dedicated to the memory of Desmond John Watson

4
 CONTENTS

7 Foreword: Deyan Sudjic, Emeritus Director,

Design Museum, London

13 Introduction: The New Curator:

Exhibiting Architecture and Design

21 Curating and collecting contemporary design in the local/

global context. Aric Chen (Shanghai) in conversation with
Kayoko Ota (Tokyo, Japan)
29 Chapter 1: Design as Exhibit
(Curator as Space-maker)
59 Meta-curation for inclusion and diversity. Catherine Ince
(London, UK) in conversation with Prem Krishnamurthy
(New York, US/Berlin, Germany)
67 Chapter 2: The Mediator of Process / Research
(Curator as Translator)
109 Fridge in a tree: On curating and memory, remembrance
and representation. Brook Andrew (Melbourne, Australia) in
conversation with Carroll Go-Sam (Brisbane, Australia)
121 Chapter 3: The Prosthetic
(Curator as Interloper)
153 Curating potential. Rory Hyde (London, UK) in conversation
with Eva Franch i Gilabert (London, UK)
161 Chapter 4: The Hybrid to the Digital
(Curator as Speculator)
197 Curatorial labour. Mimi Zeiger (Los Angeles, USA) in
conversation with Marina Otero Verzier (Rotterdam,
Netherlands)
205 Chapter 5: The Activist
(Curator as Agent)
237 The design of cultural agency. Zoë Ryan (Chicago, USA) in
conversation with Beatrice Leanza (Lisbon, Portugal)
245 Chapter 6: Event as Performance
(Curator as Dramaturge)
271 Performing and exhibiting ‘design ideas’. Paola Antonelli
(New York, USA) in conversation with Fleur Watson
(Melbourne, Australia)
279 Conclusion: The New Curator:
Towards a Specialised Practice
283 Independence as a disruptive curatorial practice in
the Global South. Patti Anahory (Praia, Cape Verde) in
conversation with Paula Nascimento (Luanda, Angola)
291 Afterword: Professor Leon van Schaik AO, Emeritus
Professor, RMIT University

294 Selected Bibliography

296 Credits and Acknowledgements
298 Index
6
 FOREWORD

Deyan Sudjic
Director Emeritus
Design Museum, London

A substantial number of the contributors to this book are embedded

in collecting institutions. Among them is Aric Chen, now Curator at
Large for M+ in Hong Kong, who played an important part in building
one of the world’s leading collections of 20th-century design and
architecture from a standing start, and with the challenge of taking a new
perspective as the frst such collection based outside Europe or North
America. Rory Hyde and Catherine Ince are members of the curatorial
staff of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the world’s frst institution
dedicated to collecting and exhibiting design, which is currently in the
midst of a substantial expansion of its activities in East London, where
its contemporary design collection will play an important part. Paola
Antonelli, Senior Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design
at the Museum of Modern Art, and Zoë Ryan, the John H Bryan Chair
and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago,
are charged with two of the world’s most impressive collections of design.
And yet despite all this impressive activity, this book does not discuss the
concept of the permanent collection at any of their institutions. Instead
it explores new forms of curating. This emphasis refects a realignment
of the way that design and architecture are framed in the format of the
exhibition and the museum.
This book itself can be understood as a curatorial
project. Its author, Fleur Watson, is another curator who has made the
transition from the editorial feld, subsequently moving to the Design
Museum in London and then to RMIT Design Hub in Melbourne,
which has taken a distinctive discursive and performative approach to
exhibition making. Watson has organised the book to explore these and
other approaches to curating: among other new roles for curators, she
focuses on their potential as space-makers, or dramaturges. The book
makes a powerful case.
We tend to assume that we know what ‘old’ curators do.
They worry about the impact of daylight on their holdings of acrylic
furniture from the 1960s. They attend conferences on the struggle to
keep technologically redundant digital archives functioning. They wrestle
with purchasing new items that refect the tastes of curatorial committees
made up of generous museum donors. Those of them who operate in the
context of encyclopaedic museums fght for space with more fashionable
or better-funded departments. This book is very much not about the
idea of old curating, or the way that the collecting institutions display
their Otto Wagner table from the Post Offce Savings Bank in Vienna, or
their Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chair. It’s not about the judgements
made in acquiring a work by Martino Gamper rather than by Konstantin
Grcic, or Hella Jongerius, or Liz Diller. The conversation is not about
defning a canon as it was once understood. For objects of use, this has
become a more and more problematic activity. What do we understand is
the signifcance of a museum acquiring a typewriter for its collection: an
object that means something when it is still in everyday production, and
something entirely different when it is not? This is not to question the
value of collecting and studying such objects. They have a lot to tell us,
on the basis that a close enough reading of any object will yield signifcant
insights into the culture that designed, made and used it.
The new curator is busy working on ways to redefne the
subject of design. In that sense, this book is as much about the practice of
design as it is about curating design. An alternative form of practice has
opened up for the designer. It is signifcant to see how certain designers
use the format of the exhibition as a means of focusing their research.
Formafantasma, for example, the Netherlands-based, Italian-born studio,
has made an impressive reputation as designers through Ore Streams,
their exploration of digital waste, shown at NGV in Melbourne and at
the Broken Nature exhibition at the Milan Triennale, followed by Cambio,
their attempt to portray the underlying reality of humanity’s use of timber
at the Serpentine Gallery in London. Both these exhibitions feature
pieces that have been designed for the exhibit by Formafantasma, but
these are not exhibitions that are primarily about Formafantasma. They
are about presenting design so that it can be understood as a network,
or a system. The exhibition can include performance – demonstrated
by meaninglessness, Su san Cohn’s moving exploration of the threatened
confscation of personally signifcant objects from refugees in Denmark.
What would be important to understand is the continued relevance of
the role of a curator – of either the old or the new variety – in the context
of such forms of design practice represented by either Formafantasma or
Cohn. Do curators still have something to offer them?
When industrial design frst made its appearance in
museums, it offered the chance to explore new categories of object and
new materials, and to understand the impact that new technologies were
having on society. Given the commercial core of design, the museum
offered an alternative basis for thinking about design. New curating is not
even about the provocative, attention-grabbing acquisitions such as the
@ symbol, or the 3D-printed handgun that museum press teams know
will get a headline when they have an acquisition number – an action
with whose future consequences today’s curators do not need to concern
themselves. Whether or not these objects ever emerge from storage to
display is the concern of another generation.
New curating is about opening the doors to something new
and different. The ‘new curators’, through a growing calendar of inter-
national biennales, new institutions with audiences to attract, and recon-
fgured old ones, have created a new landscape of exhibiting and associated
publishing that is serving to defne the terms of the debate on design.
And yet some of the individuals leading this new approach
express reservations about what the curating phenomenon has become.
Eva Franch i Gilabert, previously of Storefront in New York and also
a former director of the Architectural Association in London, makes
clear her discomfort with the idea of privileging the curator. Other
participants in the book express a preference to be known as ‘exhibition
makers’ rather than curators. This discomfort is perhaps connected to the
perception that the visibility of the curator has become something of a
distraction from the subject matter.
As is often pointed out, many of those who are now making
a career within the feld of curating started out as journalists – me

8 Foreword
Ore Streams was an investigation into the recycling of
electronic waste, developed over the course of three
years and commissioned by National Gallery of Victoria
(Australia) and further developed for Broken Nature at the
Triennale di Milano. The project makes use of a diversity
of media (objects, video and animation) to address the
topic from multiple perspectives. The offce furniture
objects act as a Trojan horse to initiate an exploration of
‘above ground mining’ and of the complex role that design
plays in transforming natural resources into desirable
products. Studio Formafantasma, Ore Streams (table,
screen, 2016–17). Commissioned by the National Gallery
of Victoria, Melbourne, for the NGV Triennial 2017.
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2017. Image courtesy of
Formafantasma. Photography: Ikon.
included. The implication is that the new curator runs the risk of taking
on too much of a foreground role, rather than that of an enabler. There
are varieties of journalism, just as there are of curating. Not all journalists
speak entirely in the frst-person singular. And not all curators put
themselves at the centre of their activities. On the other hand, storytelling
is an important part of both journalism and curating.
If we are in the midst of a wave of ‘new curating’ – perhaps
in the way that decades ago there was a wave of ‘new journalism’ – we
should refect on why, and how, this change has taken place.
Curators (new and old) involved in design and architecture
form part of a system framed by three components: the institutions that
they work in; the way that their subject is defned; and professional self-
consciousness. Those institutions range from museums to commercial
galleries selling the work of designers both living and deceased, by way
of the department stores that attempt to attract visitors with elaborate
commissions for shop windows, the assorted government departments
that fll Expo pavilions and attempt to exercise soft power through
cultural programs, and those branches of the entertainment industry
that have done well from Egyptian relics, terracotta armies and Rolling
Stones memorabilia. As for the spaces in which curators work: the 170
years since Henry Cole, guiding genius of the 1851 Great Exhibition in
London, set the system in motion, have produced many buildings with
a serious mismatch between their architectural exhibitionism and the
practical needs of exhibiting objects. Beatrice Leanza recently moved
from Beijing to Lisbon’s Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology,
and has to work within the limitations of a building that is designed to
be looked at. The Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul is a refection of
what happens when one city administration commits itself to a high-
profle construction, and its successor does not see things the same way.
The Design Museum in Barcelona’s architectural design came a decade
before any serious discussion of content took place. Spaces envisaged to
be used in specifc ways never are. And there is a big difference between
making an installation and curating an exhibition: differences that need
to be refected in the physical characteristics of the spaces used for these
different purposes.
Henry Cole did not call himself a curator when he organised
a display in Marlborough House close to Buckingham Palace. The
forerunner of the Victoria and Albert Museum was meant to demonstrate
to the general public, to students and to manufacturers, precisely what
constituted good design. There was a room full of plaster casts and
another for pottery and marble. Next door was a furniture gallery and
others for metal and work on paper. Alongside them was a demonstration
of what Cole believed to be bad design. It was a space that Cole’s critics
dubbed the Chamber of Horrors. Cole called it: Examples of False
Principles in Decoration. It included “a pair of scissors in imitation of
a stork, a fower pot in earthenware in imitation of reeds, painted blue,
and bound with yellow ribbon”, and an opal glass goblet, for which “the
transparency of the material was sacrifced to imitate alabaster”. Cole had
the grace to admit that it was the most popular part of the display.
For museums, which live and die by the size of their
audiences, the reality is that an audience is not easily persuaded to come

10 Foreword
to see a permanent design collection. The danger of a collection that
responds too vigorously to one particular moment is that, 20 years later,
it can seem like a no-longer-relevant moment is equally problematic.
It’s possible to judge by the experience of Ghent and Groningen, which
subsumed their identities into that of the postmodernism that seemed
all-encompassing at the time they were being planned, but which now
makes them seem like historical fragments. What does it mean to place
an Olivetti Valentine typewriter on a shelf, with a caption? How do you
invite the public to see a decorative object differently? At the MAK in
Vienna, Peter Noever’s strategy was to subcontract the curatorial role to
a collection of artists, from Jenny Holzer to Donald Judd. Without such
interventions, a static display of the design canon quickly becomes a
forgotten corner of a museum as the audience’s attention shifts elsewhere.
Meanwhile, trustees and museum directors have to deal with the need
to attract larger audiences, both for the income that they generate and
for the sense of success that they bring an institution. The diffculty is
that when David Bowie or Alexander McQueen can attract 400,000
ticket buyers in 14 weeks, there quickly becomes a received wisdom:
high-brand-recognition names work; music and fashion work; thematic
shows don’t. At frst there is a commitment to a mixed economy. The
self-consciously popular shows are there to make possible the important,
culturally credible material. At the same time that traditional museums of
decorative arts found their audiences falling, so the new curators tried to
fnd ways to build those audiences by redefning the core of the subject.
While design and art are not the same, curators have started to learn
from each other, and their practices can cross-fertilise each other. The
independent curator has their own form of practice, which is different
from those of curators who work within the context of an institution,
which needs to build a specifc identity based on an identifable and
meaningful approach.
When the Design Museum’s predecessor, the Boilerhouse
Project, opened at the Victoria and Albert Museum its frst exhibition
was titled Art and Industry. When the Boilerhouse was translated into
the Design Museum with its own building at Shad Thames in London’s
docklands, its opening exhibition was titled Culture and Commerce. And
when it moved into a much larger new home at the end of 2016, its
opening exhibition was Fear and Love, a measure of how much the feld
has been transformed. It’s a sequence that clearly shows the evolution
of curating from a historical study based on historic artefacts to a
provocation; Fear and Love was based on a series of new commissions that
explored such diverse versions of design practice as the impact of Grindr
on migration, and the barriers to recycling textiles.
But the idea of ‘good’ design has continued to resonate over
the decades. Even now in our own relativist times, when no museum
of design is comfortable with accepting the role of a pantheon, when
design is expected to ask questions rather than to answer them, the idea
that there might be such a thing as good design refuses to fade away.
While discussion of the nature of design may shift, it is between two well
defned and familiar poles. If we can understand the practice of design
as a continuing struggle between William Morris and Raymond Loewy
– that is to say, between a sense of social purpose and testosterone-
fuelled shape-making guided by the proft motive – then Morris’s legacy
is currently in the ascendant. It has been a long time since designers
understood their job as persuading us to buy things that we don’t really
need, at a price that we can’t really afford – or at least a long time since
they admitted to it.
But even as designers work hard on devising autonomous
electric-powered people movers, self-administered HIV tests, plant-based
plastics and biodegradable pregnancy kits, they face a growing conviction
that even the best-intentioned research is not enough to redeem them in
the current climate of pessimism about the fate of humanity. Curating
is not an activity that can take place in isolation, either from the wider
landscape of design or from the specifcs of institutional politics. The
audience is the key part of the equation, and the techniques most critical
for the curator are those that help them engage their audience no matter
what the specifc message.

12 Foreword
 INTRODUCTION
THE NEW CURATOR:
EXHIBITING ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

CURATE. Over the past decade, curating has become a verb synonymous
with an increasingly urbanised and contemporary life. The term
‘curatoria euphoria’ – coined by author and cultural historian Mary Anne
Staniszewski – aptly captures the spirit of the times.1 As Staniszewski
claims, what were previously seen as everyday activities are now
described as curatorial activities: curating menus, wardrobes, playlists,
social media feeds and – critically, in the context of a ‘fake news’ era –
news, data and information.
Staniszewski writes: “What had previously been an activity
principally associated with the rarefed domains of aesthetics and museums
has now infltrated a diverse range of territories from the mundane to the
esoteric, morphing and multiplying at an exponential pace, serving as a
strategy for ‘coping’ with our networked and globalised world.”2
Yet, despite the ubiquity and appropriation of ‘curating’ in
mainstream culture, it is clear a new kind of curator is emerging – one
who has an explicit agency in knowledge production and is leading a
movement towards an increasingly expansive, porous and responsive
mode of curatorship and cultural production. In this context, the curator
is ‘tuned to’ the relationship with the outside world – to environmental,
cultural, political and social context.
This notion of real-time ‘responsiveness’ resonates with
Paul O’Neill’s position in his infuential text The Culture of Curating and
the Curating of Culture(s), where he describes an expanded contemporary
curatorial practice centred on the visual arts. O’Neill’s book describes
a shift in which the curator, once considered a mere caretaker for
collections, is now widely viewed as a globally connected auteur…
moving from being a behind-the-scenes organiser and selector to a
visible, centrally important cultural producer.3

WHO IS THE ‘NEW CURATOR’?

The challenges of the 21st century have shaped a demand for culturally
responsive, critically engaged and highly creative approaches to curation,
cultural production and commentary. Playing a vital role in articulating
and responding to the complexity and precariousness of our time, the
‘new curator’ is a hybrid and dexterous practitioner – a critical connector
bringing together practitioners across disciplines to collaborate with
government, institutions, industry, practice and community.
Through the medium of exhibitions, programs, digital
media and virtual environments, the ‘new curator’ identifes and
articulates creative content that explores progressive and experimental
ideas. Importantly, they mediate and distil these ideas into engaging,
critical, activated and responsive content which speaks directly and
resonantly to a diverse audience. Embracing independence and
collectives, the new curator often works both inside and outside the
cultural institution, gallery or museum: at large-scale festivals and
biennial programs but also artist-run initiatives; in public and digital
urban spaces; among social enterprises, activist groups and community-
based organisations; and for philanthropic or government organisations.4
 This book is somewhat provocatively titled The New Curator:
Exhibiting Architecture and Design in full acknowledgement that curatorship
for spatial and design practice, in and of itself, is certainly not ‘new’. I do
not seek to construct a binary between ‘new’ and ‘old’ curatorship; nor is
my intention to reject the scholarship and custodianship on established
modes of curation and cultural production for architecture and design.
Instead, this book seeks to explore, discuss and investigate
emerging curatorial methodologies and ‘moves’ in order to understand
the shifting nature of curatorial practice in relationship to the complexity
and diversity of conditions to which we must respond. As such, the book
positions the specialised practice of curating architecture and design as
an expanded form of creative practice itself. The book seeks to contribute
to current practice and to provide a series of critical leaping-off points for
further investigation and debate.

THE ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN EXHIBITION –

A BRIEF LOOK BACK

The active collection of architectural materials can be traced back to the

13th century;5 however, it is only since its rapid rise in the mid-1960s
that the dedicated architecture exhibition has made an impact on the
curatorial landscape as a new typology.6 Former Curator of Architecture
and Design at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Barry Bergdoll,
explains in his essay ‘Curating History’: “[Although architects] were
displaying their work in salons and galleries before public museums
emerged at the end of the eighteenth century… exhibitions presenting
[organised exhibitions of] architecture are in large measure a phenomenon
of the late-twentieth century architectural and museological culture.”7
For a long time, and even today, architecture exhibitions
were often staged in museums of applied art or attached to a school of
architecture or professional body. Placing the exhibition in the context of
an art museum or an education institution infuenced how architecture
exhibitions were made – usually with an emphasis on a pedagogical
narrative tracking the subject from emerging to established ‘artist’.8
In the early part of the 20th century, signifcant contemporary
art museums began to recognise the importance of including architecture
in their programs. Under the direction of Alfred H Barr and Philip
Johnson, the Museum of Modern Art drew inspiration from the
increasingly infuential status of European modernism.9 And as Deyan
Sudjic writes in his Foreword to this book: “Henry Cole did not call
himself a curator when he organised a display [of design] in Marlborough
House close to Buckingham Palace. The forerunner of the Victoria and
Albert Museum was meant to demonstrate to the general public, to
students and to manufacturers, precisely what constituted good design.”10
It is a legacy that continues today in the contemporary
museum model: many major galleries and museums now share a
commitment to architecture and design as a vital component of their
respective exhibition programs.
The burgeoning recognition of architecture and design’s
cultural importance in the contemporary art museum sector infuenced
the establishment of dedicated institutions such as Montreal’s Canadian

14 Introduction
Centre for Architecture (CCA) in 1979, Netherlands Architecture
Institute (NAI) in 1996 in the Netherlands, and Design Sight 21_21
(Tokyo) in 2007, which all identifed the limitations of placing
architecture and design in the context of a contemporary arts program.
By recognising the need for a dedicated environment, these
paradigmatic institutions provided a forum to investigate the intersection
between architecture and society. Founder and Director of the CCA,
Phyllis Lambert, explains that the museum was established with the
threefold conviction that “architecture, as part of the social and natural
environment, is a public concern, that architectural research has a
profound cultural infuence and that scholars have a social responsibility
of the highest order.”11
Yet despite the legacy of the seminal architecture and design
exhibitions at these contemporary institutions, curating architecture
and design is still a relatively new practice that has yet to fully defne
its specialised distinctions from the visual arts. Exhibiting visual art
generally involves a direct manifestation of the work, which speaks for
itself. The materials used to exhibit architecture, however, can only ever
be a representation or facet of the real work; in the case of design, the
materials are mostly separated from their intended context.
In his catalogue essay for Archaeology of the Mind – a
seminal exhibition of the work of architects Herzog & de Meuron at
the Canadian Centre for Architecture – curator Philip Ursprung states:
“Works of art and commercial goods that speak for themselves and do
not need a ‘mediating authority in the exhibition space’ do not present
a challenge for any kind of exhibition… [By] seek[ing] to improve their
potential as a ‘mediating authority’ in exhibitions, such experiments
work better with material that is diffcult to exhibit, such as architecture.
One could even say that architecture in an exhibition is operating in the
similarly uncertain terrain as art in public spaces. It is in effect taking on
a task that it, by defnition, is not entirely equal to.”12

CURATING CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE

AND DESIGN

Architecture and design ideas are mostly made through a highly

collaborative process: conceptualising, drawing, writing, proposing,
exchanging, experimenting, modelling, documenting, advocating, testing,
prototyping and, ultimately, making and building in a complex matrix
of specialists and contributors. Additionally, there is a vast diversity
in ideology, language, position, faction, aesthetic and process among
design practitioners that, in turn, refects the contemporary cultural and
sociopolitical landscape to which design practice must respond.
And yet these qualities of complexity, richness and plurality
are the most challenging for the curator to mediate in the exhibition
space for a meaningful and resonant engagement and active exchange
with audiences. As a result, architecture and design exhibitions have
predominantly focused on displaying fnished outcomes (in the case of
design) or communicating a work by proxy (in the case of architecture’s
‘absence’) via representational models, plans and photographs.
This book is situated in the context of the challenges
inherent in exhibiting architecture and design ideas, and focuses on the
ways interdisciplinary collaboration is embedded from the conceptual
stages of the curatorial process. In this sense, the curatorial position
responds to and refects the plural nature of design practice itself.
The New Curator is a scholarly refection that draws upon
my practice over the past 20 years as an architectural and design editor
and curator based in Melbourne, Australia, and working in a highly
collaborative context with a focus on exhibiting design research. This
work was collected and examined through a practice-based PhD titled
The Agency of Encounter: Performative Curatorial Practice for Architecture
and Design, completed at RMIT University in 2013 with supervision
by Professor Leon van Schaik AO and associate supervisor Professor
Robyn Healy.13

THE CURATORIAL MOVES

The book defnes, maps, reveals and examines six curatorial ‘moves’
that I’ve identifed as being integral to the development and making of
architecture and design exhibitions: Design as Exhibit (Curator as Space-
maker); The Mediator of Process/Research (Curator as Translator); The
Prosthetic (Curator as Interloper); The Hybrid to the Digital (Curator as
Speculator); The Activist (Curator as Agent); and Event as Performance
(Curator as Dramaturge).
The book identifes that performative curation is implicitly
linked to the notion of ‘rapid curation’ – projects developed outside the
convention of long lead times in the traditional museum context. A key
factor in the process of curating design ideas is an ability to embrace
experimentation: live tests; unfnished ‘process’ works; and the possibility
of failure. This marks a distinct point of departure from conventional
curatorial practice in mainstream institutions.
Because testing new curatorial conditions requires an
acceptance of risk in the exhibition environment, the six curatorial
moves are dynamic, ‘open’ frameworks for experimenting with
mediating design ideas to audiences. Here, the curatorial intent is not
simply to create spectacle or to activate benign participation. Nor does
it perform expertise in the museological tradition. Rather, the intent
and position are situated in an emergent form of curatorial advocacy
and activism.
In identifying these ‘moves’ and ‘roles’, my intention is to
open up ideas around emerging mediation frameworks for design and
architecture, enabling further examination and exchange in my curatorial
community. I have deliberately called these discoveries ‘moves’ rather
than ‘strategies’, for the latter implies a fxed application. This subtle
difference in term is signifcant: the moves refect an implied, intuitive
– and previously invisible – part of the curatorial palette, rather than
preconceived or rigid strategies.

THE CURATORIAL CONVERSATIONS

Interwoven between each chapter are eight invited conversations between

contemporary curators drawn from across the world: Berlin (Germany);
London (UK); Beijing and Hong Kong (China); Tokyo (Japan); Chicago,
New York and Los Angeles (USA); Rotterdam (Netherlands); Lisbon

16 Introduction
(Portugal); Praia (Cape Verde); Luanda (Angola); and Melbourne
and Brisbane (Australia). These conversations map a community of
contemporary curatorial practice through the lens of architecture and
design. I commissioned the conversations with an intention to carefully
compose the pairings of practitioners in order to understand the
complexity of curatorship today.
Together, we ask pertinent and vital questions about what
it means to curate the contemporary, given the relatively short history
of curating architecture and design. What is the agency of the curator?
How can new decolonised, intercultural and climate-sensitive approaches
to curating and cultural production grapple with our precarious global
condition? How can we advocate for greater access, equity and diversity
in curatorship, including in the Global South? What opportunities lie
in the nexus between physical and virtual environments? And how can
curatorial practice articulate and refect upon new ideas that respond to
and transform the world?14

TOWARDS A SPECIALISED PRACTICE

By refecting upon my research and practice alongside that of

international curatorial peers and colleagues, the book aims to contribute
a set of identifed experimental curatorial mediation moves towards
an accumulated body of knowledge towards the future and specialised
practice of curating architecture and design.
My advocacy for curatorial specialisation is embedded
with an intent to advance an understanding that design practice and
knowledge production are vital to our communities in addressing the
challenges and the precariousness of our future. Climate change, extreme
weather, poverty and wealth distribution, global pandemic, systemic
racism, housing shortages, fnancial instability, food security, global
migration are all curatorial concerns.
In his book Future Practice Rory Hyde, architect and curator
of contemporary architecture and urbanism at the V&A, writes that the
value of design has been signifcantly marginalised from the decision-
making processes that shape our cities and the ability to meaningfully
contribute to the social good.15 As he explains: “All of the crises [that we
face today] have spatial consequences that architects are well prepared
to confront, and yet instead of diving in, we seem to be having our own
crisis: a crisis of relevance.”
Via a series of conversations, Hyde’s text charts new ways
of enacting change beyond conventional methods of design practice. The
book is a liberating illustration of architects and designers “operating
beyond their capacity as building design professionals” with an expanded
role as “custodians of the built environment… forging a new era of civic
responsibility and ethical entrepreneurialism.”16
And it is this convergence that lies at the heart of the
collective research – including this book. As architects and designers
pursue new ways of practising design with an ambition to reclaim its
relevance and impact, so too must the contemporary curator respond,
refect and translate the contemporaneity and agency of such practice
and its value to society. So, the ‘new curator’ actively seeks to mediate,
translate, engage and perform these new forms of expanded design
practice in active exchange with audiences.
 The ‘new curator’ develops, tests and models new conditions
in which we can collectively interrogate design’s role in the world today,
experience design through a transformative spatial encounter, and
advance new knowledge of design’s processes and research through
discursive, performative and participatory programs and events.
The ‘new curator’s explicit intent is to create a shared
space of encounter with audiences and, in doing so, to reveal the value of
design ideas to the very society to which that space is responding. In this
context, the curator is ‘tuned to’ the relationship with the outside world
and frames the content in the wider cultural and sociopolitical realm –
as a kind of ‘social choreography’.17 As such, the ‘new curator’ has an
explicit agency to mediate the making of design ideas, rather than placing
an emphasis on formal or aesthetic outcomes. Therefore, they advance
the community’s experience of and proactive engagement with the design
process, and champion the value of design ideas in addressing the urgent
challenges of our future.

CURATORIAL CONVERSATIONS:
ON POSITION, POROSITY AND POLITICS

Bookending each of the six chapters in this book is an interview by a guest

contributor. Drawn from major cultural and educational institutions, non-
proft organisations and independent practice, each contributor was asked
to invite a curatorial peer to join them in conversation.
These conversations explore a diversity of curatorial
practice and position from a range of geographical, political and cultural
conditions. They give an insight into the opportunities and challenges in
each individual context and move beyond a focus on European or North
American ideals to situate the evolving nature of design curatorship in a
wider community of practice.
Themes explored include the role of curatorial practice
in relationship to sociopolitical advocacy and activism; the agency of
independent curators operating ‘outside the museum’, curatorship that
investigates and exposes design’s value to public life; accessibility and
inclusiveness in curatorial practice and education; the vital leadership
of First Nations-led curators in revealing and recognising the ongoing
impact of unceded sovereignty, the frontier wars and the importance
of remembrance and memorial; and testing new modes of knowledge
production through curating design ideas and instigating opportunities to
test research in process.
These revealing discussions further informed the
proposition of this publication towards the emergence of an increasingly
porous, research-driven and responsive ‘hand’ in contemporary practice
today. They also speak explicitly to the challenges of communicating the
value and potential of architecture and design to contribute to cultural
discourse beyond capital or commodity. In his essay ‘The Incomplete
Curator: aka Fighting the Delineated Field’ for the edited publication The
Curatorial Conundrum:What to Study? What to Research? What to Practice?,
Liam Gillick writes:
“The incomplete curator is aware of shifting curatorial
scope. They do not see their work as the production of encyclopaedic

18 Introduction
 knowledge… The incomplete curator is part of a curatorial mass… pace
and discourse are messed around with – to be slowed down or sped up,
or kept at the same speed, is the incomplete curator’s way to remain
in permanent confict with contradictory fow. They fght hard for a
resuscitation of the public domain.”18
Gillick’s notion of incompleteness of curatorial production
resonates through all of the conversations in this publication.
Collectively, they support the emergence of a curatorial position that
is less ‘exposition’ and more ‘exploration’ – one that is confdent to
shake off the label of ‘expert’ and ask challenging and critical questions
instead. Indeed, it is this very state of incompleteness that opens up the
potential for new discoveries and an active exchange with audiences. As
Paola Antonelli states in the conversation on page 275: “It’s not relevant
anymore to tell people that ‘this is the way it is’. Instead the position
might be: ‘I have an idea and I think it’s interesting now and I’d like to
share it and talk about what it might mean…’”

NOTES
1 ��� Mary Anne Staniszewski is the author of The
Power of Display: A History of Exhibition Installations
at the Museum of Modern Art (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1998). Staniszewski has
been researching and writing about the emergence
of this new type of curation since 2011. See also
‘Curatoria Euphoria, Data Dystopia’, in Histoire(s)
d’exposition(s) [Exhibitions’ Stories], eds. Bernadette
Dufrene and Jacques Glicenstein (Paris: Hermann,
2016), 93–102.
2 ��� Mary Anne Staniszewski, ‘Some Notes on Curation,
Translation, Institutionalisation, Politicalisation,
and Transformation’, in Beti Žerovc, When Attitude
Becomes the Norm:The Contemporary Curator and
Institutional Art (Berlin: Archive Books, 2015), 247.
3 ��� Paul O’Neill, The Culture of Curating and the
Curating of Culture(s), (Cambridge, Massachusetts:
MIT Press, 2012).
4 ��� This text draws from ‘The 21st Century Curator
and Cultural Producer’, an unpublished discussion
paper originally authored by Fleur Watson (2007)
and further developed in collaboration with Marnie
Banham for the College of Social Context, RMIT
University, Melbourne (2020).
5 ��� Phyllis Lambert, ‘The Architectural Museum: A
Founder’s Perspective’, Journal of the Society of
Architectural Historians 58, no. 3 (1999), 308.
6 ��� Jean-Louis Cohen, ‘Exhibitionist Revisionism:
Exposing Architectural History’, Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians 58 (1999), 316.
7 ��� Barry Bergdoll,. ‘Curating History’, Journal of the
Society of Architectural Historians 57, no. 3 (1998), 257.
8 ��� Bart Lootsma, ‘Forgotten Worlds, Possible Worlds’, in
The Art of Architecture Exhibitions, concept by Kristin
Feireiss (Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2001), 17.
9 ��� Fleur Watson, ‘Beyond Art: The Challenge of
Exhibiting Architecture’, Master’s thesis (Kingston
University/Design Museum, 2007), 16–17.
10 �� Deyan Sudjic, ‘Foreword’, page 10 of this volume.
11 �� Lambert, ‘The Architectural Museum’, 309.
12 �� Philip Ursprung, ‘Architecture Exhibitions’, in
Natural History, ed. Philip Ursprung (Montreal:
Canadian Centre for Architecture and Lars Muller
Publishers, 2002), 25–26.
13 �� The research was conducted in a practice-based and
refective model as part of the Practice Research
Symposium (PRS) founded by van Schaik over 20
years earlier at RMIT University. See also Leon
van Schaik and Anna Johnson, eds., By Practice, By
Invitation: Design Practice Research in Architecture
and Design at RMIT, 1986–2011, The Pink Book,
3rd edition (New York: Actar, 2019). Through the
process of examining my key projects in relationship
to those of my extended community of practice
across the world, my PhD research was located in
the context of ‘performative curation’, which tests
experimental mediation methods for encountering
design ideas and process, as distinct from a focus on
exhibiting fnished works or artefacts.
14 �� Fleur Watson and Marnie Banham, ‘The 21st
Century Curator and Cultural Producer’
(unpublished discussion paper, College of Social
Context, RMIT University, Melbourne, 2020).
15 �� Rory Hyde, Future Practice: Conversations from the
Edge of Architecture (London: Routledge, 2012), 17.
16 �� Hyde, Future Practice, 24.
17 �� My refections on the dramaturgical curator are
also drawn from conversations with Professor Paul
Carter. They also refer to Carter’s notebook essay
‘Choreotopography: Algorithms of Sociability’,
written in preparation for the upcoming publication
Places Made After Their Stories: Design and the Art of
Choreotopography.
18 �� Gillick, Liam. ‘The Incomplete Curator’ (aka
Fighting the Delineated Field) in The Curatorial
Conundrum:What to Study? What to Research? What to
Practice?, eds. Paul O’Neill, Mick Wilson and Lucy
Steeds (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press,
2016), 148.
20
Curating and
collecting
contemporary
design
in
the local/global
context

Aric Chen
(Shanghai) in
conversation
with Kayoko Ota
(Tokyo)
Aric Chen is Curator At Large at M+, the museum for
visual culture currently under construction in Hong Kong’s
West Kowloon Cultural District, where from 2012 to 2018
he was the museum’s frst Lead Curator for Design and
Architecture. He is also Curatorial Director for Design Miami,
Professor of Practice at the College of Design & Innovation
at Tongji University in Shanghai, and was formerly the
creative director of Beijing Design Week. Kayoko Ota is an
independent curator based in Tokyo and from 2002 to 2012,
was curator and editor at AMO – the think tank counterpart
to the Offce for Metropolitan Architecture. During this
time, Ota worked as curator on the celebrated OMA–AMO
exhibitions such as Content (2003–04), The Gulf (2006)
and Cronocaos (2010). In 2014, Ota was the commissioning
curator for the Japanese pavilion exhibition In The Real
World at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Aric spoke with
Kayoko to explore the importance of research to creative
practice, the perils of curatorial imperialism and the shifting
role of the contemporary curator today.

22 Curatorial Conversations
 Aric Chen
Kayoko, you’ve produced a number of incredible exhibitions and
projects that have contributed so much to our understanding of
20th-century Japanese architecture. You’ve worked from Japan, then
Europe for many years, and now you’ve returned to Tokyo. As a
curator, do you feel that the historical narratives you’ve traced have
been infuenced depending on whether you’re working in Rotterdam,
for example, versus Tokyo?

Kayoko Ota
Actually, history was not a subject of central concern for me prior to
working in Rotterdam – I’m not a historian. I started my career as an
editor of the architectural journal Telescope, which connected me
with architect Rem Koolhaas at OMA. During the ten years I worked
at AMO – the ‘think tank’ counterpart to OMA – I found that research
could bring so much to our historical understanding of architecture.
History became much more elastic and dynamic than I’d previously
thought was possible. The culture at OMA is that you are constantly
asked to establish a narrative that is connected to history. It doesn’t
matter what your title or background is; everybody is put into the
same kind of ‘washing machine’ and everything starts with research,
taking in all possible elements to come up with a surprising answer.
This way of working was a great infuence in terms of how to think
and communicate about a subject and became my initial steps
towards curating.

AC
For the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale, directed by Rem Koolhaas,
each national pavilion was charged with revisiting the development
and impact of modernism in their respective geographies over the
past 100 years. You curated the Japanese pavilion, In The Real World –
can you describe that process?

KO
I had already worked with Rem to research 1960s and 1970s
Japanese architecture for Project Japan: Metabolism Talks. In
Venice, I wanted to defne the ’70s as a turning point for Japanese
architecture in the process of modernisation and analyse what
had really happened in that decade from two distinct points: what
happened in the 50 years before and the 50 years afterwards. For
instance, we wanted to reveal the impact of the economic crisis,
mass production and consumption, and the change in values and
lifestyle upon architecture. It was fascinating to rediscover a number
of radical experiments by young architects who are established
today, such as Tadao Ando or Toyo Ito. These important moments are
forgotten today and we wanted to challenge this amnesia, salvage
and integrate these facts into a new, comprehensive narrative, which
– we believed – would bring critical insight into today’s conditions.
While trying to take a non-conventional viewpoint that would help
reveal something that had been untapped in Japan, we also had to –
simultaneously – negate any fantasised or exoticised viewpoints that
are often projected onto Japan from other places.
 KO
Aric – I have a question for you on this topic. M+ is an international
institution but situated in Hong Kong and with an intent to bring new
perspectives to the rest of the world, especially the Western sphere.
I can imagine it receives all kinds of pressures or expectations. Even
the museum’s standpoint is not fxed to one point. I assume you
need to address the local Hong Kong audience, which must be very
different from the mainland Chinese perspective, and then, of course,
there are many different cultures within China itself, to say nothing
of Asia at large. So how have you defned what constitutes an ‘Asian
perspective’?

AC
That’s been a very delicate question we’ve had to navigate. We started
out saying M+ is a “global museum from an Asian perspective”, fully
aware of how problematic that is, before hedging a bit by changing
that to “global museum from the vantage point of Hong Kong, China,
East Asia, Asia, and beyond”, which is only slightly less problematic.
It’s been a convenient shorthand. But it would be better to describe
what we’re doing as building narratives around the transnational
migration of ideas, objects and people based on networks that
densify the closer you get to where you’re situated, which, in our case,
is Hong Kong. For every discipline, geography, period or narrative
that we’re examining, we try to look at it from the perspective of
where that material is coming from. It’s interesting that both you and
I originally come from journalistic backgrounds because journalism
requires the ability to empathise with your subject. That is, whether
you’re looking at contemporary Indian art, post-World War II Japanese
design, or the architecture of nation-building in post-independence
Singapore, you’re always trying to put yourself in the place of your
subject. Then you try to understand your audience and your job is to
connect the two.

KO
Journalism is always in my consciousness also because I think
it’s important to examine a subject from multiple sides. But the
discussion of audience brings me to the question of the institution.
When you are part of an institution, there’s another layer of pressure,
which is that you’re also part of this whole, let’s say, economic or
operational system. And then you have these many constituencies
who set the agenda like trustees, donors, audiences, peers, and so
on. But you can also be polemical. Did you ever come across the
dilemma between how polemical you can be versus the needs and
constraints of the institution?

AC
As with any institution, there are a number of discursive, economic,
political and other agendas driving M+. Of course, without all of these

24 Curatorial Conversations
diverse stakeholders, you’d never get the kind of investment required
to make these kinds of resource-hungry institutions possible. In our
case, it’s particularly complicated because of the current tensions in
the relationship between Hong Kong and mainland China, and in some
ways, M+ is caught in the middle. So far, M+ has been almost entirely
government-funded, but as you look into the future, it’s clear we’ll
increasingly rely on private philanthropy and corporate sponsorships,
and that will come with its own issues, pressures and, perhaps,
opportunities also. The imperative to embrace different audiences and
points of view is our overarching polemic. In Hong Kong, as elsewhere,
the current resurgence of localism and nationalism has reinforced
binary ways of thinking, where you’re either local or you’re foreign.
M+ was frst proposed as a global museum ten years ago. Of course,
‘global’ doesn’t carry the same connotations now as it did then. Our
struggle has been to show people that it’s not a choice between local
and global; the two can coexist.

AC
Kayoko, early on in my role at M+, I was approaching various
architects in Japan about acquiring their work for the museum’s
permanent collection and there was one elder Japanese architect
who suggested that what we were doing amounted to a form of
imperialism. What do you think about that position?

KO
I think that prejudice may come from circumstances where, for
instance, curators from the Centre Pompidou had been coming to
Japan on and off for many years and acquiring a lot of materials
from architectural studios. Many saw this as a drain of Japanese
cultural patrimony to institutions outside of the country. I don’t
have that position, but it is the dominant and conservative way of
looking at it. This attitude reminds me of a Japanese saying: “You are
spitting against heaven.” In other words, you are accusing yourself
indirectly because, in this case, the root is really the lack of collecting
[architectural materials] in Japan itself. If there was an institution here
making the same effort as European institutions or those such as M+
then we wouldn’t have this dilemma.

KO
This sensitivity to exoticisation is an interesting issue for curators.
There was an exhibition at a major art museum in 2018 about the
history of Japanese architecture from ancient times to today that
relates to this issue. Over the past ten years or so, there have been
Western institutions like MoMA, the Barbican and MAXII that have
attempted to tell the ‘story’ of contemporary Japanese architecture.
Finally, a major Japanese museum took up the subject. It was a
popular success, attracting more than 500,000 people including many
visitors from other parts of Asia, but it created a polemic in Japan
as being reactionary. It seemed that the exhibition was trying to tell
the story that architecture across Asia is rooted in Japan. This also
seemed to be indicated by the exhibition’s Japanese subtitle: The
Genes of Japanese Architecture. I couldn’t help sensing a nationalistic
drive in the overall narrative. It might be the operational strategy of
 an institution or marketing scenario but I acutely felt the need for
a system for critique and for visualising feedback. The only arena
for visitors to express or exchange opinions on the exhibition was
through social media. I fnd it really important to provide a channel
for debate in response to material that is presented by a museum.
Do you think curators should be confronting this problem?

AC
It sounds like they were trying to tie the Japanese architectural
narrative to other parts of Asia, which, in itself, is a fne idea. But I
suppose that pursuing a ‘global from a local perspective’ strategy, at
its extreme, could start to resemble an imperialistic mentality. At M+,
we’ve also faced concerns from colleagues in Indonesia and Malaysia
about this with regard to our efforts to collect their work. In my mind,
it’s not what you do but rather how you do it – the respect you give
the material in placing it within a broader context and the voices you
bring into the conversation.

KO
Yes, exactly, but these days you also need to deal with mass
audiences, which you can mobilise through social media and the
internet. This is playing a much larger role and building up a cycle
of rapidly transmitting ideas, which are then consumed by receivers.
Unfortunately, this tends to become a one-way transmission with the
larger institutions having the most dominant voice. It becomes like
fashion: whose voice is bigger and more extravagant and impressive?
I think that for exhibitions – and, in our case, for all forms of
communicating architectural design and urbanism – you really need
to foster communication with the audience.

KO
Aric, you’re still attached to M+ as Curator At Large but you’re
also now an independent curator. It seems to me a fascinating
combination, and I’m wondering if independence will change your
agenda or approach?

AC
Going back to being an independent curator has prompted me,
in some ways, to get back in touch with my work as a journalist.
Back then, I would write for both mainstream and more specialised
publications, doing everything from serious criticism to top-ten lists.
My agenda is basically to unravel the possibilities of design and
architecture, and their convergence with art, fashion, popular culture
and media – how this articulates the world we inhabit and what
that means for us culturally and as societies. There are many ways
you can slice and dice this for different audiences and contexts.
For example, I’m currently working as Curatorial Director for Design
Miami, and what I do for them will be framed differently than, say,

26 Curatorial Conversations
the museum exhibitions I’m currently working on, which will then be
framed differently depending on where they are: in New York, Japan,
China and Israel.

KO
Juggling these different perspectives in various cultural contexts at
the same time must be really exciting. You will become a medium
yourself.

AC
I think this is increasingly necessary for all curators, exactly because
of this condition we’ve just been talking about, in which different
perspectives exist and interact simultaneously. I think the role of a
curator is increasingly about negotiating this. About a year ago, I was
in Switzerland with Hans Ulrich Obrist, and we were talking about
how little time we spend actually doing research or curation [in a
traditional sense] because a curator’s job is increasingly taken up
with administrative, fundraising, marketing, PR and other tasks, to say
nothing of simple relationship management. The role of a curator has
become more like a ringmaster’s. You’re trying to get all the parts to
work together, and you have to be many things to many people.

KO
I agree that curation is morphing or expanding itself as it manages
to delve further into the interrelationships of things, even different
cultures. I feel this role continues to change: as you say, you get all
the parts to work together and you can also make breakthroughs in
unexpected areas. That is truly exciting.
28
Design as
Exhibit

(Curator
as Space-
maker)
Mies van der Rohe’s temporary pavilion for Germany at
the International Exposition, 1929, in Barcelona, Spain
is both a celebrated work of modernist architecture, a
manifesto for new ways of living and an infuential example
of the 1:1 or ‘live’ architectural exhibit. Although the
building was torn down in 1930, it was later reconstructed
and is now on permanent display in Barcelona’s city
centre. View of principal facade, with German fag. Gelatin
silver photograph, Mies van der Rohe Archive, gift of the
architect. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art,
New York. © Photo SCALA, Florence.

30 Design as Exhibit
 INTRODUCTION

Curators have long embraced the potential of the full-scale ‘extract’ or

‘live’ exhibit as a device for exhibiting and communicating architecture
and design in the exhibition environment in the absence of the ‘real’
thing. Unlike actual buildings – which demand regulations, governance
and permanence – these temporary displays experiment with ways of
thinking about and making architecture while creating an activated
environment for public interaction and engagement.
As architectural historian Adrian Forty describes in
the essay ‘Ways of Knowing, Ways of Showing: A Short History
of Architectural Exhibitions’, the concept of ‘live’ architecture is
one “where the exhibits are themselves full-size buildings…”1 This
curatorial approach – where structures are presented at 1:1 scale and,
often, as extracted ‘parts’ of buildings – has generally been conceived
to bring to popular attention the intersection of design, technology and
material innovation, or to communicate how architecture contributes
to societal ‘good’.
Today’s ‘live’ exhibit could be seen as carrying on a
historical legacy: of the imperialist exhibition halls of the 19th-century
world’s fairs; the large-scale, temporary structures of the 20th century
produced by international architects for international ‘expos’; and the
recent resurgence of ephemeral pavilion architecture ‘popping up’ in
institutions and public spaces all over the world.2
In 1929, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s steel and glass
temporary pavilion for Germany at the International Exposition in
Barcelona proved one of the most infuential and pure expressions of
modernist values in full-scale ‘live exhibit’ form – and one that endures
today, albeit in reproduction form.
Similarly, in Germany, a series of international building
exhibitions used 1:1-scale display structures to bring new modes
of living to wide and popular public attention. One of the most
celebrated – The Weissenhofsiedlung for the Deutscher Werkbund
exhibition (1927) – showcased affordable, sustainable prototypes
for contemporary housing to communicate a spirit of ‘neues Wohnen’
(new living).3 These full-scale exhibits – an early form of ‘display
home’ designed by Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Walter
Gropius and other high-profle architects – were highly infuential in
communicating modernist values for community living and were later
sold on as permanent housing.
The Weissenhofsiedlung was an important precursor to the
durational Internationale Bauausstellung,4 which ran from 1979 to 1987
in Berlin. The IBA – or international architecture exhibition – was a
‘live’ urban renewal project that involved “the active restoration of the
historic fabric of the city as a guiding principle for contemporary inner-
city redevelopment… and was applied in the context of an ‘urban village’
dominated by social housing.”
Throughout the mid-century, progressive architects such
as Ray and Charles Eames and Alison and Peter Smithson used the
exhibition and the gallery space as a site to experiment, prototype and
communicate ideas for modern living. The Eameses’ Good Design
Series at the Museum of Modern Art incorporated a variety of devices
including the full-scale extract to communicate the modernist values
of so-called ‘good design’, while the Smithsons’ House of the Future for
the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition (1956) was a scenographic 1:1
prototype of a dwelling intended for a childless couple, set 25 years
into the future.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, a series of seminal exhibitions at
the Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAi), commissioned by then-
director Kristin Feireiss, expanded the mode of the ‘live’ exhibition as a
site for architectural expression and experimentation.5 One of the most
celebrated of the series was Daniel Libeskind: Beyond the Wall 26.36°
(1997) – considered radical at the time in its intent to reframe the
gallery as a site for testing and mediating ideas rather than as a space for
monographical survey. As Feireiss and Libeskind saw it: “An architecture
exhibition should be a unique testing ground for new ideas of building
… shift[ing] the object-like notion of an exhibition to an investigative
process whose results are just as original and precise as those some call
‘real’ architecture.”6
In the new millennium, we have witnessed a resurgence of
the 1:1 exhibit in the form of temporal pavilions around the world. Their
popularity has been driven, in part, by the success and high profle of
the Serpentine Galleries pavilion – an annual commission for a summer
structure in London’s Kensington Gardens. Underwriting these widely
shared aesthetic spectacles is a commitment to enable an international
architect to realise their frst project in Britain, in temporary and
transportable form.7
New York’s Museum of Modern Art focuses its pavilion
series on supporting emerging practitioners through the Young
Architects Program; the brief is for an experimental summer structure
at the PS1 site in Queens that provides respite in the form of shade,
seating and water. Such is its success that the series has evolved with
international editions in locations such as Rome, Santiago, Istanbul
and Seoul.
Australia alone has witnessed three high-profle programs
for temporary architecture emerge in recent years: the Naomi Milgrom
Foundation’s MPavilion in Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Gardens
(2014–); Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation’s Fugitive Structures
commission in Sydney (2013–16); and, most recently, the National
Gallery of Victoria’s NGV Summer Architecture Commission (2015–).
Despite the popular appeal of these small projects,
architectural critics and the design media often assess them through a
retrospective lens, dismissing most as miniaturised architectural objects,
democratised public art or as vehicles for corporate branding. Arguably,
this critique overlooks the potential for these small interventions to
reveal, through their very transience, contemporary architectural ideas
that are responsive and ‘socially tuned’. At their most compelling, these
new forms of full-scale exhibits are provocations in contemporary
culture, with a renewed currency to ‘perform’ design ideas, reach diverse
audiences and actively engage people in their formation with an intensity
and global reach via digital connectivity and platforms. As such, these
temporal experiments have a critical role to distil design ideas and
provide a moment of intensity for ‘thinking’, in a way that permanent
architecture never can.8

32 Design as Exhibit
‘Live’ architecture exhibits offer visitors an engaging and
haptic encounter with an ‘architectural extract’ at 1:1 scale.
When situated in the gallery, the challenge is that these full-
scale exhibits are often isolated from context, program and
site. Daniel Libeskind: Beyond the Wall 26.36°, Netherlands
Architecture Institute (NAi), Rotterdam. 1997.
Photography: Mischa Keijser & Janôt Laval. Courtesy:
Studio Libeskind and Collection Het Nieuwe Instituut.
 Refecting on this contemporary context, it is clear that
a new ‘move’ is emerging in curatorial practice that sits in relationship
to the historical lineage of the traditional ‘live’ exhibit mode, and yet is
distinct from it. Termed here the design as exhibit move, this development
responds to a more explorative and open form of practice; its curatorial
‘hand’ aspires to open up the exhibition space as a place to test nascent
research and progressive design.

DESIGN AS EXHIBIT (CURATOR AS SPACE-MAKER)

In the design as exhibit move, the spatial quality of an exhibition is at

the very centre of an exhibition’s curatorial intent and conceptual
development. Within this context, the environment is often commissioned
as a ‘new work’ which foregrounds the exhibition design as ‘an exhibit
within itself’ and as the primary mediating mechanism – as distinct from
the exhibition design as background or as supporting infrastructure.
Mostly, the intent is to create an intensity of experience by
transforming the original qualities of the space as a performative place of
encounter: a mediated environment that creates a resonant and immersive
spatial experience within itself. In this case, the design acts as a live test,
an experiment or a 1:1 set to create space for exchange and debate.
Embedding an exhibition’s design within the very frst
explorations of its curatorial concept represents a departure from the usual
‘silo’ of the museum process.Yet it is a very natural move within the process
of the ‘new curator’ – who may have trained initially in design, or worked in
design-related felds.This means that an exposure to and an understanding
of designing space is deeply embedded within their mindset.
The design as exhibit also refects the typically collaborative
and multi-authored curatorial process of contemporary practice, which
integrates the designer into the earliest conversations and explorations
that generate the conceptual intent that will drive the project. In many
museum and gallery contexts, the design is developed in isolation from the
early stages of the curatorial process and then responds to a fxed object
list or the collection of works, developing an aesthetic form or ‘wrapping’
for the exhibition. By contrast, the design as exhibit is mostly conceived,
designed and developed well before the fnal material on display has been
completely researched and established, let alone fnalised.
In this context, the design as exhibit move is intended less
to replicate a piece of architecture at 1:1 scale (isolated from program,
context and site) and more to create a spatial experience for performance.
It sits somewhere between theatre scenography and an ‘encounter’ that
mediates architectural qualities such as compression, release, materiality,
diffusion of light, and so on.
In many cases, the design as exhibit move experiments with
prototyping on-site in the very midst of the installation process and
within compressed production times – a performative spatial encounter
that mediates the making and testing of design ideas. As such, it stands
in stark contrast with the slowness of the architectural process itself.
Unlike a conventional piece of architecture, the design as exhibit does
not (generally) require rigorous documentation, extensive stakeholder
consultancy and lengthy sign-off processes of compliance and regulations.

34 Design as Exhibit
 Instead, the design as exhibit move responds to the context of
rapid curating where an exhibition or event is, at times, intended only for
a short duration, or it exists in a temporal or transitory space such as a
festival or project space. Additionally, it responds to the more progressive
cultural environment, which conceives of the gallery space as a ‘live
laboratory’ or place for exploration rather than a traditional, educative
museum space. As such, it is often characterised by the adaptive use of
ready-made or cheap, accessible materials. The material itself is often key
to this curatorial approach and drives the design through an ability to
transcend its usual application.
This chapter explores a series of recent exhibitions and
programs that expand upon the 1:1 exhibit form. Ranging from small-
to large-scale, and from outside and in the institution, these case
studies investigate the shift in intent from the ‘live’ exhibit methodology
(communicating the reality of a building via an ‘extract’) to a more
porous, rapid and transformative design as exhibit approach to making
spaces that mediate and translate design ideas.

CASE STUDY 1

After Dark (State of Design Festival, 2009)

The rapidly produced, lo-f and temporal materiality characteristic of

the design as exhibit move is evident in this small, modestly funded yet
impactful project. After Dark was a ‘set-like’ performance and discussion
space for a state government-funded design program: the 2009 State of
Design Festival in Melbourne, Australia.
After Dark was conceived and curated as an intimate and
informal space for local Melbourne-based creative practitioners to
meet, exchange ideas and debate their shared concerns with visiting
international designers who were in the city to deliver a ticketed ‘keynote
address’ at the festival’s industry forum. Government-funded festival
programs are notoriously focused on building manufacturing and
industry relationships rather than on fostering a culture of ideas and
grassroots exchange between young designers and the community, so
After Dark’s intent was to create a dedicated and transformative space
that addressed this imbalance.9
The move was an intuitive response to the challenges
inherent in the context of a government-funded festival that focused
on events connecting design with manufacturing and industry, rather
than exploring design as an ideas-driven practice and a cultural
pursuit. The challenge lay in curating a space for an event that
flled this ‘conceptual gap’ and brought together the Melbourne
community with visiting international designers. In an intimate forum
they could debate the synergies and differences in their practice
positions in response to a series of issues-based curatorial themes and
provocations.
After Dark was curated by the author and developed in
collaboration with architects March Studio and Dennis Paphitis, the
founder and former creative director of the Australian skincare brand
Aesop. At the time, Aesop was widely known for working with progressive
designers and commissioning experimental architectural ft-outs for its
growing group of stores. The project was sited in the basement of Aesop’s
This spread: After Dark was conceived as a temporary ‘set’
for a program of debates in the context of a government
design festival. The installation – constructed entirely from
yellow trace paper – was commissioned as a new work
with the intent to foreground the design as ‘the exhibit
within itself’ and create a heightened sense of encounter.
Curator: Fleur Watson. Exhibition Design: March Studio.
Photography (this and next spread): Tobias Titz.

36 Design as Exhibit
This spread: The design as exhibit curatorial move does not
attempt to replicate architecture at 1:1 scale. It is intended
as a transformative or sensorial spatial experience and, as
a result, has a relationship with scenography and theatre.
The move is also characterised by the adaptive use of
ready-made or accessible materials that, in turns, drives
the design and transcends its usual application.
38 Design as Exhibit
Collingwood warehouse, and was produced with limited resources and
for a lifespan of three nights only; temporality is a recurring motif in the
design as exhibit move.
The banal basement of the Aesop warehouse was
transformed using a simple, lo-f material: a draped yellow trace-paper
installation that evoked a typical drawing paper used by designers for
sketching and working up design ideas. The draping yellow glow of
the trace paper heightened the installation’s sense of compression and
intimacy. The materiality, diffusion of light and carefully considered
composition drew the audience into a transformative spatial encounter in
a performative set for a series of themed conversations with practitioners
who included Nipa Doshi (Doshi Levien), Anthony Dunne and Fiona
Raby (Dunne & Raby), John Warwicker (Tomato), Tom Kovac (Kovac
Architecture), Rodney Eggleston and Anne-Laure Cavigneaux (March
Studio), and Mark Burry (Design Research Institute).
The project referenced international events of the time,
such as the Dark Side Club: a salon for conversation and an event
held during the vernissage period of the Venice Architecture Biennale.
However, the Venice event is held in various off-site bars, restaurants and
palazzi across Venice and is open only to a relatively exclusive circle of
international practitioners. By contrast, After Dark was held in a simple
Collingwood basement and was open to the local creative community
through the context of a publicly focused festival.
After Dark’s intention was to embed the space’s design as
an equal and integral part of the early conceptualisation of the curatorial
project. Such a commitment to integrating the testing of design ideas into
the beginning of the curatorial process, and to instigating collaborative
partnerships with a series of emerging practitioners, goes beyond the
role of patronage; instead, it brings an element of risk to the project’s
development that would be very diffcult to achieve in the traditional
museum context. However, it is this deliberate reframing of the exhibition
environment as a risk-accepting space which opens up the curatorial
framework as a testing ground for experimental mediation methods
and ideas. Temporal, shapeshifting, transformative, the design as exhibit
approach also resonates deeply with the devices of theatre scenography.
As early as the 1930s, Herbert Bayer, former director of
the Bauhaus Dessau’s printing and advertising workshop, recognised
exhibition design as an avant-garde practice in its own right, calling it
“a new discipline, as an apex of all media and powers of communication
and of collective efforts and effects.”10 Bayer recognised that
architecture and design exhibitions did not generally deal with fnished
works and, therefore, required a different and considered spatial
environment from that of a traditional art gallery. Bayer’s infuential
Diagram of Field of Vision drawings were conceived as a preliminary
experiment for an installation commissioned by the Deutscher
Werkbund called Room of Our Time (1930). The diagrams effected a
signifcant shift in installation design by mediating a new type of spatial
experience: they included the viewer inside the exhibition space and
arranged the panels and objects in relation to the observer’s feld of
vision. Rather than mount images fat against the wall, Bayer tilted the
panels above and below eye level in order to achieve better connection

40 Design as Exhibit
This page: Herbert Bayer’s Field of Vision diagrams were
conceived for an installation called Room of Our Time
(1930). The diagram become integral to Bayer’s approach
to installation design, proving a signifcant paradigm shift
by the inclusion of the viewer inside the exhibition space
and the arrangement of panels and objects in relation to
the observer’s feld of vision. © Herbert Bayer/VG Bild-
Kunst. Copyright Agency, 2021.
with the viewer.11 Bayer’s drawings continue to be infuential in
curatorial and museum practice today.12
It is clear that After Dark mediated space as Bayer
suggested: there is a more porous, responsive and adaptive curatorial
hand at play through its use of lo-f yet transformative scenography
that brings the relationship with the viewer into direct dialogue
through performance. Within rapid timeframes and constrained
budgets, After Dark deployed the design as exhibit move to heighten the
spatial encounter, recognising that the result could never be a piece of
architecture in its own right – it always lacks a connection to a greater
context, program or site. To this end, the intent of the move is to enable
a heightened spatial encounter in which viewers could experience
architectural qualities – such as light, compression through space, and
framed views.
Moreover, it is important to recognise that the design as
exhibit exists in a mutually responsive and merging ecosystem rather
than manifesting as a rigid or fxed operation or strategy. This refects the
open-ended character of the moves as they shift, merge and infuence
each other throughout a project’s duration. We can see that After Dark’s
responsive, adaptive design as exhibit overlaps and dissolves with another
curatorial move, event as performance (which I describe in Chapter 6): its
layered program of participatory debates and conversations was curated
in order to activate the space via performance and exchange. Here,
together, the moves drive a deliberate spatial mediation that, in turn,
acts as a kind of performative set for shared exchange, where ideas are
unfolded, tested and opened up for discussion.

CASE STUDY 2

The Future Is Here (Design Museum, London with

RMIT Design Hub, Melbourne, 2014)

For The Future Is Here at RMIT Design Hub (2014), the design as exhibit
move was integral to its curatorial intent: to perform a large-scale built
‘test’ of the ideas inherent in a local design research project that would
speak to the exhibition’s central themes. Originally conceived as a touring
exhibition from London’s Design Museum, The Future Is Here was
recontextualised and co-curated for RMIT Design Hub in collaboration
with Design Museum curator Alex Newson.13 The exhibition spoke of
‘the new industrial revolution’ and of the impact of new technologies in
the context of a third-wave industrial revolution or a post-digital age. It
asked: what do digital technologies such as 3D printing, bio-mimicry and
robotic fabrication mean for our future?
The exhibition environment was reconceived as an
exhibit within itself and the intent was to create a full-scale architectural
structure that would ‘house’ the exhibition objects and materials but,
more importantly, would also create a full-scale spatial experience
where the exhibition visitor could experience a live research experiment
in process that was clearly articulating the curatorial emphasis on
design experimentation and speculation rather than fetishising new
manufacturing technologies themselves.

42 Design as Exhibit
This page: For The Future Is Here the intent was to
commission and build a large-scale ‘test’ of a current
research project and, in turn, shape the exhibition space
as an exhibit within itself. The structure formed a series
of surfaces for process-driven works, objects, material
tests and video interviews. The fnal Composite Wing
structure transformed the gallery space to create a
delicate spatial magic. Exhibition design: Studio Roland
Snooks. Curators: Alex Newson (Design Museum), Kate
Rhodes, Fleur Watson (RMIT Design Hub). Photography
(this page and next spread): Tobias Titz.
This page: The structural and ornamental features of
the installation were created through a digital translation
of the natural swarming systems of birds and fsh and
produced by merging robotic fabrication, CNC milling
and laser-cutting technologies with traditional boat-
building techniques.
44 Design as Exhibit
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAILTA JA
VESILTÄ ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright
in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and without
paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General
Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and
distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if
you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the
trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the
Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such
as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and
printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in
the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright
law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially
commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG
LICENSE
 PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the

free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this
work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase
“Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of
the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or
online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and

Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand,
agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual
property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to
abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using
and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for
obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™
electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms
of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only

be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by
people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.
There are a few things that you can do with most Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the
full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There
are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™
electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and
help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the
collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the
individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the
United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright
law in the United States and you are located in the United
States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying,
distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project
Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will
support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free
access to electronic works by freely sharing Project
Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this
agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name
associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms
of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with
its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it
without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also
govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most
countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside
the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to
the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying,
displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works
based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The
Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright
status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project

Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other

immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must
appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project
Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed,
viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United

States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it
away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg
License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United
States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to
anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges.
If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of
paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use
of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth
in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is

posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and
distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through
1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder.
Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™
License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright
holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project

Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files
containing a part of this work or any other work associated with
Project Gutenberg™.
 1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute
this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1
with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the
Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form,
including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if
you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project
Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or
other format used in the official version posted on the official
Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at
no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a
means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project
Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™
works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or

providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works provided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the
method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The
fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty
payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on
which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your
periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked
as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information
 about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation.”

• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who

notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that
s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and
discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project
Gutenberg™ works.

• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of

any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in
the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90
days of receipt of the work.

• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project

Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different
terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain
permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™
trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3
below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend

considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on,
transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright
law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite
these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the
medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,”
such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt
data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other
medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES -

Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in
paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark,
and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic
work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for
damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU
AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE,
STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH
OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH
1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER
THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR
ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF
THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If

you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of
receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you
paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you
received the work from. If you received the work on a physical
medium, you must return the medium with your written
explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the
defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu
of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or
entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.
If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund
in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set

forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’,
WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR
ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this
agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this
agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the
maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable
state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of
this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the

Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the
Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any
volunteers associated with the production, promotion and
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless
from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that
arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project
Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or
deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect
you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of

Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new
computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of
volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need are critical to reaching Project
Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™
collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In
2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was
created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project
Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your
efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the
Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-
profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the
laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by
the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal
tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax
deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and
your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500

West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact
links and up to date contact information can be found at the
Foundation’s website and official page at
www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without
widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission
of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works
that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form
accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated
equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly
important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws

regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of
the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform
and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many
fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not
solicit donations in locations where we have not received written
confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or
determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states

where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know
of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from
donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot

make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations
received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp
our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current

donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a
number of other ways including checks, online payments and
credit card donations. To donate, please visit:
www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project

Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could
be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose
network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several

printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by
copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus,
we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any
particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new
eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear
about new eBooks.