WHAT IS THE ROLE OF THE INDEPENDENT CURATOR TODAY?

discussion with Nina Folkersma, Nesli Gül, Àngels Miralda, and Nat Muller

What is the role of the independent curator today? What factors are shifting our understanding of curating and authorship? In February, Àngels Miralda published the article “Who Killed the Independent Curator?” in Frieze Magazine in which she argued that the value of the independent curator has seen a decrease in favour of intra-institutional relations through the doubling of institutional contracts. Freelance roles, appropriate for non-contracted workers, are regularly given to full-time institutional employees. How does this affect artists? How does this restructure the art ecosystem? This open discussion brings together four perspectives of Amsterdam-based curators to introduce the current state and local conditions for independents. The title of this open-discussion intends to put a focus on the little-known world of how independent curators operate and the struggles created by the lack of differentiation between independent and institutional curators within Dutch funding infrastructure.

image caption: Ahmet Öğüt, Appointed Curators, 2022