Conclusion

This was an interesting and thought-provoking assignment. One of the things I learned about the process of organizing an exhibition of works by various artists, is that sometimes it’s hard when you find “that piece" - the one thing that fits the theme or ties another two pieces together perfectly, and lo and behold, it’s made by no one - a random, anonymous whomever that can’t be given the proper credit, so you’re stuck. You can’t use it even though it’s PERFECT. That’s terribly frustrating and I can feel for a curator who goes through the same set of emotions. Being so excited but then totally let down is no fun at all. But by reworking your idea and looking and looking and looking for another piece that’s made by another artist that’s more established or more importantly, documented, allows you to get back in the flow and make the theme work again.

I found that writing about how each piece made me feel was by far the easiest aspect of this process. It’s easy for my to just let how I’m feeling about each work to just kind of flow out in a stream of consciousness. A challenging aspect of this assignment was trying to intelligently describe the pieces in an academic light. Thoughtfully applying the elements and principles of design was a challenging aspect for me.

I didn’t really understand how involved curating a show was going to be. While the creative side is easier for me to grasp, the logistics of putting it together was much more stressful and the logistical hurdles of doing a physical exhibition must be immense. I suppose the more one does these things, the easier it gets, so by definition, curating a show becomes almost like a piece of art in and of itself.

I thoroughly enjoyed connecting works of art by artists with individual experiences to my theme. I feel that while we are all different, culturally, spiritually, emotionally and otherwise, we are all still human beings and we all share common experience. Love, loss, suffering, grief, confusion and astoundment, we all have common threads running through us. So, in that aspect, it was fairly easy to pick out these threads to stitch them together to my chosen theme.