While art fairs are mainly places of transactions for dealers and collectors, Chicago Expo has made itself a destination for museum professionals with its curatorial forummanaged in partnership with International independent curators (HERE). With dozens of curators from institutions large and small registered to attend this year, including Andria Hickey, chief curator of The Shed in New York, and Emily Liebert, curator of contemporary art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the meeting s will open with an opening speech by Victoria Noorthoorn, director of the Museo Moderno de Buenos Aires, followed by a series of short sessions where groups of eight to ten curators discuss specific issues and, finally, a meeting and discussion. a collective discussion around the theme of care.
“It was present in conversations ten or 15 years ago, but it meant something very different from what it can mean today”, explains Renaud Proch, the director of ICI. “At the forum, we will look at care through a conservator’s work environment, in terms of accessibility, community engagement. We will see how we take care of each other in the field, through issues of working conditions. And we’ll look at how we care for artists – not just artworks – and how we can care for artists from different backgrounds, different practices, and different ways of working.
The curatorial forum has several new features this year, including a $3,000 curatorial travel grant that will be awarded to a curator participating in the forum. And a new initiative called “Chicago Assembly” unfolded in the weeks before and after the fair, with eight local curators – institutions spanning the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art at Northwestern University and Chicago at nonprofit ThreeWalls – take part.
“Chicago curators were often very, very busy at previous editions of the fair because they were hosting fellow guests, guest administrators, or guest artists,” says Proch. The assembly will allow them to “revisit some of the conversations that took place during the national meeting, learn some lessons and apply them to local contexts”.
