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(screenshot by the author via Twitter)

We’ve become accustomed to the usual art institution social media feeds that remind us of artists’ birthdays (HBD, Silpa Bhirasri!), collection highlights (nice, Riza-yi `Abbasi, Met!), upcoming events (Basquiat talk at the Pérez!), and the other static in our art-filled lives. OK, that’s harsh, but you know what I mean. What are we really asking for? What insight do we seek?

keep-calm-and-ask-a-curator-home

Miranda’s mug? (via keepcalm-o-matic)

#AskaCurator day was conceived by UK-based Mar Dixon and has been embraced by many museums around the world. Yesterday, to mark the occasion, two well-known art writers (Jörg Colberg in Massachusetts and Carolina Miranda in California) decided to poke fun at the daylong curatorial celebration in their own social media–savvy way.

Let me curate that for you …

https://twitter.com/cmonstah/status/776138619492769792
https://twitter.com/cmonstah/status/776141439071772672
https://twitter.com/cmonstah/status/776145692838334464
https://twitter.com/cmonstah/status/776147403334266880
https://twitter.com/cmonstah/status/776148139271086080

Hrag Vartanian is editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic.

5 replies on “Two Writers Artspeak Their Way Through #AskaCurator Day”

  1. Wonderful. Also recommend “The Sandwiches of the Artist”, by E. A. Carmean, Jr., October, Vol. 106 (Art World Follies), spring 1981:” Jackson Pollock’s early sandwiches are characterized by the use of raw meat in jagged shapes, derived from his work in a bar-b-que drive-in owned by ThomasHart Benton. Between 1940-1945 Pollock began to stack this meat, inspired by Picasso’s Jambon quiches of the surrealist period. But in 1947 Pollock changed an
    entire way of making sandwiches when he began pouring spaghetti onto toast.
    “Jackson broke the bread.” Article includes description of Motherwell’s “Anchovies for the Spanish Olives” (Anchovies, mustard, black olives on white bread).

  2. I would like to hypothesize that perhaps the use of these particularly elements as materials in these morning cyclical performances have been so overused that they are no longer relevant? I would even go so far as to say that eggs and toast are dead. Bacon has become tediously derivative, even when used for irony. I would like to see the breakfast curators go beyond these traditional constructs and perhaps explore materials that are not controlled by the hegemony of Western culture. 😉

    1. I would be fascinated by Carolina’s interrogation of a dosa, but issues of cultural appropriation might come into play. The arguments could get ugly, especially since the implication that she must limit herself to pan amasado con manjar would arguably be sexist.

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