Who are Curators?

Curators are cultural workers who usually work in museums or art galleries. They use their scholarship in specific areas of art history to make exhibitions, manage and care for collections, as well as do advanced research. Curators select artwork and write about their selections for the museum public. Curators think about the connections between artworks. Art can be assembled in many different ways. Sometimes pictures or objects are gathered together because they are made in the same medium, such as drawing, stone cut or lithograph. Sometimes objects are grouped because they share the same idea, such as animal life, legends or landscape. Artwork can also be selected to represent the work of a specific artist or family such as the Ashoonas or Pootoogooks.

As the curator of your exhibition on this site, you have many decisions to make. The first step is to search the database and select works that are interesting to you. You can begin with an idea or theme but often finding the work intriguing is a good start. Once you have a selection of works, think about what they have in common. Do they share the same ideas? Are they all drawings or similar in colour? Do you have photographs in your selection? Are artists from the same family? You can research individual artists at this point. What would you like to convey to your audience by presenting this selection of artworks? You might also want to omit works and add new ones once your idea begins to gel.

The next stage is to develop a curatorial statement. This is where you describe in a few sentences what the collection of works you have assembled means to you. You may want to add short notes on individual pieces here that you may think will be important to people looking at your virtual exhibition. Next, you will be able to put your exhibition online. It is important to think of the position of the images in relation to one another to help the viewer understand your curatorial statement.

This is the fun part! Now you can load your exhibition and promote it through your social media networks with friends and colleagues or on this website with new audiences from across Canada.

Think you are ready to try your hand at curating? Create a virtual exhibition!