ABSTRACT
The word ‘care’ is as present in the vocabulary of contemporary art and culture as the word ‘curating’. Curators, in particular those engaged in anti-capitalist, anti-colonial, anti-imperial, feminist or queer ways of working, insistently point out that curating comes from the Latin root, curare, which means to look after, organize, treat, or cure. While the duty of care has historically informed professional museum standards for the care of collections, the authors whose work is assembled in this book, who are mainly working in contemporary art and social practice, respond to the interlocking global crises of social and ecological care and the more recent professional crisis of curating in the art world’s conspicuous overproduction. Introducing the distinction between ‘caring curating’ and ‘curating care’, this book invites more nuanced praxis and critical analysis of curating. Caring curating speaks to the responsibility of working with injustices in interdependency. Curating care refers to care as the subject matter of exhibitions or other curatorial formats.
