Envisioning curatorial care

Cynthia Milton and Anne-Marie Reynaud use Curatorial Dreaming as a method to ask staff at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg about how they envision their curatorial future responsibilities in ethical, cultural, and practical terms:  

Inspired by Shelley Ruth Butler and Erica Lehrer’s approach in their book Curatorial Dreams, we asked NCTR staff members about their ‘dreams’ for the centre’s future permanent exhibit.36 Their concrete and creative proposals revealed not only that they are already imagining how a larger space could be used, but also that the NCTR has conceptualized how to proceed in accordance with its own principles of Indigenous curating. This is an ongoing process that aims to go beyond decolonizing the archives: the aim is as well to implement practices of display that would ‘create a “living archive” thereby facilitating Indigenous participation, collaboration, and ultimately, the process of reconciliation.’37 The potential here is for an Indigenous way of engaging with and sharing this collection, including digital media. As noted, the principles of such Indigenous collection and exhibition practices have resulted in important curatorial choices by the NCTR staff – for example, not labelling or providing written explanations beside the objects or art pieces on display, in order to facilitate visitors’ personal connection with the objects, and following Indigenous protocols for animate objects. Additionally, Indigenous curatorial practices have embraced the sensorial-producing aspects of the gifts and honoured their agency through different means, which in some cases may mean not displaying them at all.

Article abstract is here