ABSTRACT
This case study problematises curation and authorship of artist interventions at specialty museums. 1 Engaging the artist to activate a museum's permanent collection through intervention has become so popular it is almost a cliché. The Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art in Toronto, Canada, is no stranger to this practice and since 2012 has commissioned three separate artist interventions from three distinguished artists – painter, Joanne Tod, conceptual artist An Te Liu and ceramic artist Clare Twomey – to respond to the museum's eclectic and renowned ceramics collections. For both clear and complex reasons, the series has garnered more critical attention than the museum's regular contemporary ceramic exhibitions. This chapter proposes that the artist intervention is a significant tool in contributing to the artist's development by sowing the seeds of a new hybrid art form, but may be less successful at transforming so-called static artefacts from a museum's permanent collection into active social encounters. It considers the merits of collaborating with artists outside the ceramic field to mediate the specialised discipline. Lastly, it examines how the curator navigates the artist's journey while avoiding the pitfalls of losing curatorial control in the process.
