The National Gallery of Art: curatorial philosophy and practice

ENThe National Gallery of Art is happy to take part in this new format for doctoral seminars, one that is organized as a collaboration between the National Gallery and Vilnius Academy of Arts, and one that, unusually, takes place in a gallery setting, and one that is also open to the public. I have to admit from the very beginning that we explored or researched this format together with colleagues from across the Gallery, at the Academy and beyond. Today I am going to speak briefly about curatorial philosophy and practice as we understand it at the National Gallery of Art, a museum. My starting point is the article by Tom Holert that was suggested by Marq on research as knowledge production. I am going to speculate about what kind of knowledge the museum produces, how the curatorial is integrated in this production, and how we interpret research in the Gallery as curators and educators. To start, what are the regular fields of inquiry in an art museum? First of all it is the museum collection and archive that we research. It’s certainly art and cultural history because we are an art museum. We also inquiry into the museum itself: its spaces, its content, and its interaction with the public - the museum is everything that comes into the field or is close to the field of museology and sociology, art history and cultural studies, history and the creative and cultural industries.