Beginning of My Professional Museum Career

In a broad sense, curators use exhibitions to build bridges between art and an audience. It’s because of this reason that we must make sure that exhibitions are appealing and meaningful to our visitors, as we want to attract not only a returning audience but also new visitors. But what is an art exhibition? A production space? A simple platform of presentation? A discussion space? An allegoric space? Or a context of negotiation for artists, curators and market? The relevance of this question lies in its answer as I believe it conditions the curatorial focus of the curator.

Personally, I consider the art exhibition as an educational platform. I believe exhibitions can produce new forms of understanding, and facilitate its dissemination, decoding and interpretation. They can drive experiences, contribute to the development of new perspectives and encourage active associative thinking as a vehicle for the production and dissemination of knowledge.

My perspective of an art exhibition as an educational platform, consequently led me to consider the museum as a learning institution, one which provides its audience with a variety of activities from which to acquire new knowledge, and in which to encounter enriching experiences that evoke emotion and stimulate the senses and the mind itself.

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My curatorial focus, developed through the conception of exhibition and museum, centres around the interrelation between art, visitors and their connection to education and knowledge. I believe curating an exhibition is about creating a setting in order to open up a discourse between the artist and the visitor, a collaborative work which in order to be successful must consider the concept of the exhibition, the ongoing dialogue with the artists, the development of the project, the budget, the communication and publication, the installation time, the opening, the life of the exhibition, etc.

I think successful art projects create conversations, stimulate the mind and offer knowledge.

In addition, I believe we are living in an era where society and culture can change beyond recognition, where technological progress is rising at an exponential rate and where most of us are constantly stimulated and engaged with social media. In light of this veering world and despite each curator has its own focus and interpretations, I believe the curator should also consider far-reaching themes, such as the changing roles of museums and institutions or the deep changes in the economy of culture (e.g. fewer public funds). Nowadays, museums face many challenges, some more than others, but to a greater or lesser extent they all need to acknowledge and adapt to the assorted forces shaping the contemporary world such as the demands of environmental sustainability, demographic trends, expanding internationalization, the emergence of new centres of economic and cultural power, and opportunities provided by new technologies, particularly, social media. In the case of modern and contemporary art museums, they also need to engage with the increasingly diverse practices of contemporary artists, constructing new narratives from the complex histories of contemporary culture.

Traditional museum functions of collecting, conserving, displaying and interpreting art are now being redefined in the light of new art practices and a rapidly evolving vision of the relationship of art museums and their public.

Regarding what I expect to achieve and learn from the internship it is relevant to state that I believe my lack of undergraduate studies in art considerably reduces the opportunities I may have to procure a curatorial career within a museum. Taking this into account, I understood that I had to complement and augment my master’s with a long-term curatorial internship in a museum with a reputation of excellence; it is these qualities that invoked my interest in applying to The McNay Art Museum. My primary objective as an intern is to experience the innermost workings of the curatorial department on a day-to-day basis and gain a broad knowledge and understanding of how the department functions. I consider that the responsibilities and duties I would be required to deal with along with the input and guidance I would receive from my colleagues would be an invaluable start to defining my professional persona in the curatorial practice and will lead me to the beginning of my professional museum career.