Naming a Practice: Curatorial Strategies for the Future

M. Wayne Cunningham, formerly the director of Academic and Career
Programs at East Kootenay Community College, is a freelance writer
specializing in the arts in Kamloops, British Columbia.

In November 1994, the Banff Centre of the Arts hosted “Naming a
Practice: Curatorial Strategies for the Future,” a five-day conference
on curating in the visual arts. This book, a record of the event’s
proceedings and presentations, is intended not as an exhaustive
examination of curating, but rather, as stated in the preface, as “a
useful reference, particularly in the Canadian context, for
consideration of issues that have influenced and continue to affect
curatorial practices.”

Each of the book’s six sections contains major presentations followed
by records of taped discussions. With 29 contributors, the results are
predictably uneven, but there are occasional nuggets of insight. Peter
White’s introductory commentary and Scott Watson’s essay “The Past
of Our Practice: A Note on the 1960s” provide a useful context for the
subsequent proceedings—namely, local knowledge/new internationalism,
methodologies, negotiations, and ethics.

The summary responses to the conference (three presentations by Daina
Augaitis, Johanne Lamoureux, and Richard Fung) indicate that it raised
more issues than it resolved. Nevertheless, Naming a Practice provides a
good starting point for future conferences.