Everyday I wake up and check magazines, web magazines, blogs, Facebook accounts, as do you. I see curators basically specialising in curating gallery shows. Generally they have a fixed roster of artists, or a fixed aesthetic canon they propose from gallery to gallery. I could close my eyes and spot who curated this and that show. They travel, they attend gallery dinners, they curate art fairs booths. Do they have a fee on gallery sales? Do they earn a percentage when an artist from their clique goes into a collection? I don’t know- I don’t know any of them.
I am writing this to investigate how the traditional role of the curator, intended as a sort of mediator between the artist and the public, has been slightly converted into a professional figure dealing with trends and economic success of contemporary artworks.
And trust me, I don’t want the art world to be a bed of roses, a place in which unicorns collect contemporary art and curators fly over carpets in search of hidden treasures.
I understand money and I understand name circulation. I worked in a major gallery for a year. I paid rent.