fiona mcgovern

Lecture

Some considerations about an ethic of curating

In my contribution, following from my inaugural lecture held a few months ago at the University of Hildesheim, I would like to continue and further develop my reflections on the ethics of curating. The focus is on questions of what an ethic of curating includes, what current efforts exist in this regard and what difficulties and problems are associated with it. Last but not least, I wish to address the question of how an ethic of curating in the form of study programs such as the Cultures of the Curatorial, or my own teaching within the cultural sciences as well, can be taught and applied.

Fiona McGovern is an art historian, author and curator. Since 2018, she teaches as a Junior Professor for Curatorial Practice and Art Education at the University of Hildesheim. Her research interests include (artistic) exhibition history and theory, ethics of curating and interdisciplinary approaches in the arts since the 1960s. In 2016 she published her monograph Die Kunst zu zeigen (To Show the Art). Künstlerische Ausstellungsdisplays (Artistic Exhibition Displays) by Joseph Beuys, Mike Kelley, Martin Kippenberger and Manfred Pernice (transcript). She is also co-editor of the anthology Assign & Arrange. Methodologies of Presentation in Art & Dance (Sternberg 2014) and the book Jill Johnston. The Disintegration of a Critic (Bergen Kunsthall/Sternber 2019). The latter was created as part of an exhibition of the same name, curated together with Megan Francis Sullivan and Axel Wieder in the Bergen Kunsthall in the spring/summer of this year.