Young Curators, New Ideas V

Detroit Art Week (July 16 – 21, 2019), an annual self-guided tour and citywide celebration of contemporary art in Detroit, is now accepting applications from national and international curators for the 5th iteration of “Young Curators, New Ideas.” In 2008, Detroit Art Week Founding Director, Amani Olu, established the series to promote and support emerging curatorial voices. After a six-year hiatus, “YCNI V” will take place from Wednesday, July 17 to Sunday, July 21, 2019 at Trumbull & Porter Hotel Detroit. No age restrictions apply.

Featuring 12 independent curators selected from an international open call, “YCNI V” will shine a light on the cultural, artistic, social and political transformations initiated by women, LGBTQ and gender-non-conforming individuals through their creative, and at times independent, curatorial practices. With a sense of relevance and urgency, these multifaceted and dynamic micro-exhibitions will consider contemporary issues that exist at the intersection of curatorial practice and artistic production. Within a 256 square-foot hotel room, each curator will present one or two artists whose work is a thoughtful and provocative discussion on the most pressing issues of our time.

Exhibition Thesis

In 1998, Michael Brenson famously wrote in Art Journal that “the era of the curator has begun.” And so, it seems that everyone is calling themselves a curator these days. Over the past ten years especially, the reference to the curator has exploded in popular culture and as a consumer buzz-word. While everyone is busy curating playlists, drink menus and Pinterest boards, it seems that the art-world curator is still a title reserved for the few who can successfully finesse or appease institutional and commercial gatekeepers. Resources, power and influence, are just as consolidated as they ever have been, and perhaps more so as individuals and institutions react to the democratizing forces of social media with claims of expertise and connoisseurship. What is the process by which one becomes a curator? This question is especially relevant for young curators coming from intellectual, cultural and/or artistic traditions that have been seen as backward, primitive, minor or inconsequential to the history of art and ideas; as they attempt to break through entrenched structural and institutional barriers to assert themselves as curators and experiment with or destabilize contemporary curatorial practices.

The question of how one becomes a curator – and whose labor is recognized as curatorship – is also especially relevant to women, LGBTQ communities and gender non-conforming people. Elke Krasny puts forth that “firstly, independent curating was crucial to transforming modern art into contemporary art [and that] secondly, many of the independent curators who were profoundly shaping this transformation were feminists, active as feminist artists, art historians, activists, thinkers, and public intellectuals.” Yet, in 2018, according to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, women are a long way off from achieving parity in the arts. For example, women working across arts professions make an average of $20,000 less per year than their male counterparts. With this historical knowledge in mind, we must presently attend to the kinds of labor that go unnoticed and undervalued. Further, Krasny writes, “we need to raise the question: what are the current transformations initiated by feminist and queer-feminist curating whose politics and practices we witness today telling us?” Though many may not explicitly identify with the label feminist, women, LGBTQ communities and gender non-conforming people are undoubtedly concerned with questions of power, domination and social control, concerns with which feminist social critiques also share. “Young Curators, New Ideas” will shine a light on the cultural, artistic, social and political transformations initiated by women, LGBTQ and gender-non-conforming individuals through their creative, and at times independent, curatorial practices. With a sense of relevance and urgency, these multifaceted and dynamic micro-exhibitions consider contemporary issues that exist at the intersection of curatorial practice and artistic production.

Submit your proposals here. Contact hello@detroitartweek.org or 313-312-1419 with any questions.

Application fee: $0
Application deadline: March 15, 2019
Notification: April 1, 2019
Exhibition dates: July 17 – 21, 2019