Jed Perl is right!?

Just a quick note about my current thoughts on the differences between editors and curators. I've got a long standing hate for everything on the web being 'curated' when I feel it's been edited. Seems trifling, but I think it's a symptom of the web being 'visual' to people (I'm delivering pictures of shoes I want, therefore I'm a curator) rather than verbal.

Visuality aside, I believe that if you are taking the course of information we all see daily as (metaphorically) a flow of water, then editing is narrowing down a river to a garden hose (again metaphorically). If you are reducing the scary amount of information to a smaller state, reducing the disorder, then (to me) that is an act of editing. Yes, editors select and organize. That is part of their gig. The editor of an academic book filled with her colleague's work is arranging and organizing, but the reason she was invited to build that book is because she can see the wider seascape and can see the importance of the essays that she selected. That winnowing down to a smaller selection, presenting the original essays without lengthy comment, is an act of editing. Writing a new book that quotes those same essays with new original comments for each and charts how these same essays relate to a wider story, is what curating is to me.

It's publicly adding original information to an existing body of work.

So on to Perl

The challenges involved in such curatorial work are the challenges of interpretation. Scholarship and erudition are essential. So is an instinctive feeling for the freestanding value of the work of art. And all of this must be combined with a sense of how works that emerged in a particular time and place can most effectively be presented in another time and place—in a way that is true both to the past and to the present.

Perl's notion is that real curators are there to present the contextualization of objects, ideas, and situations, and this rings true to me. Curating is the activity of knowing a subject and being able to add to it rather than arrange it.

A consequence of this notion is that it would be easy to say I think that editing isn't scholarly but curating is. I think that editing is equally academic, but it doesn't function synthetically. Editing is analytic and curating is synthetic. For an edited book of essays synthesis happens in the readers mind rather than in the creation of the book.

the unexpected links between fifteenth-century Italy, Oscar Wilde’s England, and New York today

That's what a well curated show delivers. Unexpected relevance.

2011 is over, long live 2011

Instead of remembering the memories with a top ## list, I'm giving out awards:

Object I most wanted to play with: Manuel Rocha Iturbide's I Play The Drums With Frequency
I wanted to plug my ipod in and see how other sounds changed this sculpture. Disponible would have been a much more pedantic show without this sculpture.

Object I had the most fun playing with: Wendy Jacob's Ice Floe
Good clean fun, eerie, and smart. You could "look" at art without using your eyes, which is always a bonus. Was also a great place to check your phone or think about how awesome art is.

Object I loved, even if I only saw half of it: Christian Marclay's The Clock
I'm not sure how much of The Clock I saw, but it was a lot. The next time someone tells you art has to be experienced completely to be understood, be skeptical.

Nerdiest show: Drawing with Code
This show was fantastic. The Purple Blurb talk at MIT was fantastic. The artist talks at the DeCordova were fantastic. This show was solid with historically interesting work that is often disregarded for being too far outside what art "should be."

Best talk given to a bunch of captive undergrads, their professor, and myself: Katy Siegel talking about Art Since '45 at Tufts.
Seriously, the book was sensational and the talk was compelling. Why did no one show up to this? While we're at it, Art Since '45 should also be considered one of the best books of the year.

The "Live Locally, Show Globally" award: Jaap Pieters at Spectacle
This award is the anti-yokelist award. Pieters work was about the world outside his apartment's window. It reminded me of Rebecca Meyers, but more cogent and succinct. His vision of a micro-local becomes mythical, extending the confined into a elaborate, but universal archetype.

Show most reflecting a generation: The Strange LIfe of Objects, Annette Lemieux
This show was great. It's one of the exhibitions this year that I kick myself for not writing about. Using only a few works, Lelia Amalfitano and Judith Hoos Fox brought more than just Lemieux's work, they illustrated a whole generation's concerns. These objects made visible for me just how complicated art was when the international art market started to dictate artistic value. The concealed personal meaning mixed with social metaphors created/creates meaning that survives to this day.

The I wanna talk to that guy about art all day award: Matrix 162, Shaun Gladwell
Anybody who creates Pacific Undertow Sequence (Bondi) is someone I feel that I could relate to. The work is lovely and I think it expands his visual subject matter just enough to move past the hyper-masculine, Mt. Dew, X-Games style he's become known for.

Best historical document: Record > Again! 40 Years of Video Art in Germany, Part 2
I heart video art so much, and yet knew nothing about almost any of these works. You could teach an entire semester's course off of this collection or maybe finally end the myth that video art sprung fully formed from Nam June Paik's head in 1965. It didn't. It also includes a great window into what the artistic situation was in divided Germany; it was complicated and low-tech.

Best plea for donations: the MFA's contemporary wing.
They have an ambitious staff that truly care about the subject, it's time for the collections to grow. Anyone got a friend who owns some really interesting art?