ABSTRACT
This chapter considers practices of exhibition-making and curatorial work. Like educational research, curatorial practice is, in many instances, a process of new beginnings, one that is committed to seeking out objects and situations that will likely enlarge what one already knows. For most curators, the intention for an exhibition worked out in advance is rarely if ever kept intact as the form of the exhibition begins to take shape. By studying the form of the exhibition along with the making practices of curators and exhibition-makers, something is revealed about how curators work with ideas, objects and situations. The chapter considers both the practice of exhibition-making and the exhibition itself, framed through two primary concepts: The exhibition as text, and the exhibition as an animate and agential force. Exhibitions contribute to the production of particular types of spaces, be they social, interactive, educative or appreciative in nature and intent.
