In this series of salon talks, Sir John Soane’s Museum and James Taylor-Foster are inviting curators and thinkers to reflect on the meanings, implications and strategies behind the display of architecture.
Architecture, and the discourse which envelops it, has tied itself into a Gordian Knot of self-representation and reflection. While an ever larger number of curators of architecture step into the limelight, we see one central question emerging with renewed urgency: what does it mean to curate architecture? How should architects, curators and spectators conceive the material of architectural curating: drawings, photographs and models, or ideas, systems and strategies? In what ways can a growing international cohort of curators of architecture negotiate the differing demands of the cultural institutions and organisations in which their practice frequently takes place, those of the profession and of society more broadly? Who is, could, or should be, the audience? Ultimately, what is the purpose of curating architecture?
Contributors (Opening Season)
- Florence Ostende — Barbican Centre, London
- Marina Otero Verzier — Het Nieuwe Instituut; After Belonging Agency
- Owen Hopkins — Senior Curator of Exhibitions and Education at the Soane
- Marie Coulon — Director and Founder of Betts Project, London
- Joseph Grima — Design Academy Eindhoven; Ideas City at the New Museum
- James Taylor-Foster
- Giulia Foscari — AA Museum Lab, London