ABSTRACT
When I did research in and on the booming art world in China between 2016 and 2018, curation seemed omnipresent. Curators’ names were everywhere and were sometimes more prominently displayed than the names of exhibiting artists. This chapter broaches the twin questions why in China the role of curators is so prominently advertised, and how curatorship is related to authority. The global discourse and practice of curation proliferated over the last few decades because of the need to explain contemporary art, as part of the discursive and curatorial turns in global art. But in the Chinese art world curators take on an enlarged role as validators and authorizers of artists and their art works against the backdrop of – at least until recently – weak contemporary art institutions, limited public exposure to contemporary art, and competitive canonizations juxtaposing Chinese and Euro-American art. In China, the authorization afforded by curators is partly predicated on their role as art writers, i.e. authors within a textualized Chinese art canon, and on the combination of artistic positions they hold and roles they perform within a rapidly expanding art world and market in which institutions are very much in a flux as well.
