Portraying the Foreign as Familiar: Curators and Cultural Managers as Mediators of Globalized Art Worlds

The reproduction of images of the self and the other is to a large degree the work of the curators and cultural managers who are responsible for conceiving and organizing cultural events. Viewing a foreign culture through the eyes of the recipient country, they project it onto their own culture or adapt it to a preformed image. Also in play are certain codices of the international culture industry that render the exoticism of the unknown decipherable at the national level. In this project we wish to explore the contribution made by curators and cultural managers as mediators and constructors of globalized art worlds. 

In the context of the event and exhibition series MEXartes-berlin.de (2002), Graciela Schmilchuk conducted and evaluated interviews with its curators. In December 2003, the IAI hosted the colloquium Kuratoren, Kunstmarkt und Politik in Lateinamerika (Curators, the Art Market and Politics in Latin America) in cooperation with the Centro Nacional de Investigación, Documentación e Información de Artes Plásticas (Mexico). In addition, the project director took on the task of coordinating the working group “Filosofía y conceptos de los centros culturales” (Philosophy and Concepts of Cultural Institutions) within the Red de Centros Culturales de América y Europa (2002-2007).