"To Curate is to Mediate" - Review with the Participant Dr Yvonne Pauly

JS: You work as the coordinator of the student lab in the humanities at the BBAW. What questions or expectations did you have going into the training programme "The basics of curating" started with?

YP: Our student lab aims to give young people in transition from school to university an impression of how the modern humanities work, what their topics and methods are, what research looks like in practice, at the academy and beyond. So if, like me, you spend a lot of time imparting knowledge to others and are therefore constantly "on air", it is important to regularly switch to "on reception", otherwise the relevant systems will atrophy. Apart from this general need, what attracted me to curating was the special kind of communication: communicating through the selection and arrangement of objects in the room. I had never dealt with this before, even though the work of a curator has a lot in common with what I do.

JS: Was there a moment or a theme during the week when you realised: "I can transfer this directly into my work"?

YP: Less in the sense of a single "aha experience" or a one-to-one application; the effect was more indirect and is still there. The lecturers came from all areas that intertwine when preparing exhibitions: Two curators, a designer, a lawyer specialising in copyright and image rights issues and an exhibition architect. This always brought new aspects into view, some closer to me, some further away, but it never got boring. I really enjoyed dealing with so many ideas and perspectives and realised with a certain surprise that I am also approaching my own work with renewed curiosity, perhaps precisely because we spent the whole week working so intensively in a different institutional setting.

JS: The training combines conceptual work with practice - from developing an exhibition concept to visits to museums and memorials. Which elements were particularly helpful for you?

YP: On the second and third day, the programme included excursions to Potsdam and Berlin, to exhibition venues with very different profiles: from the Lindenstraße Memorial Foundation to the German Historical Museum and the Humboldt Forum. After each visit to an exhibition, there was always a discussion with one or more members of the curatorial team, who explained the content concept as well as the budget and schedule and also gave us the opportunity to ask questions. We then subjected both to a detailed follow-up in the group. I found this joint "manoeuvre critique", in which we discussed our impressions and applied the analytical knowledge we had already acquired to the current examples on a trial basis, very fruitful.

JS: Has your view of exhibitions or educational formats changed as a result of the course? If so, in what way?

YP: "Less is more", "Kill your darlings!" and exercises in the "trial and error" of exhibits: The credo of our lecturers*, but also recommendations from the circle of participants, which developed into running gags of the seminar discussion, everything boiled down to concentration, the willingness to do without even prestigious pieces from a collection if they are not functional in the respective context. A good exhibition takes visitors on a journey, it doesn't clutter them up. These insights have strengthened my minimalist understanding of my role and encouraged me to continue taking risks: Ideally, to organise a workshop based on just a few careful but precise impulses. To invest a large part of the preparation time and energy in this basic arrangement, the design of the didactic "experimental set-up", and then to give the students the freedom to trust and expect a lot from them: they will do it.

JS: Are there any specific ideas or projects in which you can imagine using what you have learnt in the future?

YP: I would actually like to integrate an experiment of this kind into my next project, to pass it on to my "target group", so to speak. The upcoming series of student labs will focus on democracy in the transatlantic relationship. One of the participants' tasks will be to design an exhibition with the working title "Democratic Things" and each bring a possible exhibit from home: Which object epitomises democracy for me and why? The concreteness of the task suits the pupils, but also challenges them. It also provides an opportunity to explore the issue of object labelling, which was also raised several times during the training: Are such texts indispensable in order to adequately understand an exhibition? Or do they tend to pre-empt and cut off the process of reflection and independent attribution of meaning during viewing?

JS: For whom would you particularly recommend the further education programme - especially from your perspective as an education provider?

YP: As already indicated, I can definitely see similarities between the activities. In both cases, it's about opening up a topic to another person, bringing it into their horizon. Being able to "look at the other person" is a crucial prerequisite for my professorial recruitment. It is equally important to create a framework, to offer orientation, to provide structure. It's similar when developing exhibitions: Every exhibition necessarily has a thesis, is a setting, but - at least if it goes well - in the knowledge that the curator's concept will only be realised in the visitor, in the viewer - or not. To come back to your question: In my opinion, teachers and other players in this sector definitely benefit from further training, as it adds another dimension to their professionalism. Conversely, it would also be beneficial for exhibition organisers if they understood the issues outlined above as their own. It is hard to understand why "education and mediation" is still outsourced to service providers in large exhibition centres when the conceptual work has long been completed. After all, curating means mediating per se.

JS: How did you experience the collaboration in the group - also in the exchange with participants from different professorial recruitment contexts?

YP: The dialogue with the others was absolutely inspiring, I can't put it any other way! We were a pretty colourful group with participants from all over Germany and from various professorial recruitments and fields of activity (museum, science, industry, media and journalism, education). As a result, we were able to make connections and cross-connections with each other in a very informal way. We sometimes worked on our group projects for hours on end and discussed them in plenary sessions. How happy we all were about this special experience became clear once again at the final round: we simply asked the fantastic team of lecturers to continue the event under the motto "The basics of curating".

The interview was conducted by Julia Sammler.

Fancy further training?

Our course "The basics of curating" will be offered again in 2027.