Curatorial education as a sociocultural practice: two conceptual frameworks

Abstract

The article raises the question of redefining curating in the field of artistic processes and defining it as a sociocultural practice. As a starting point for curatorial activity, we understand curatorial education, which currently exists in Russia in two forms: within the frameworks of schools of contemporary art and in the mode of academic programs. The focus of the research is the schools of contemporary art as new educational institutions that form both curators and artists capable of carrying out, in addition to artistic, curatorial activities. The article examines two conceptual frameworks that make it possible to problematize the basic points associated with the model of curatorial education in the form of schools of contemporary art. The first framework is associated with the theory of critical pedagogy and its development in the works of Henry Giroux, primarily in relation to the issue of the relationship between cultural and educational practices. The second framework is designated by Boris Groys’s concept of the new. It allows problematizing the position of schools of contemporary art in relation to previous educational strategies in the artistic space. In the context of two conceptual frameworks, curatorial education is seen as a form of cultural production.