Curating Under Pressure International Perspectives on Negotiating Conflict and Upholding Integrity Museum Meanings Series

Curating Under Pressure breaks the silence surrounding curatorial self-censorship and shows that it is both endemic to the practice and ubiquitous. Contributors map the diverse forms such self-censorship takes and offer creative strategies for negotiating curatorial integrity.

This isthe first book to look at pressures to self-censor and the curatorial responses to these pressures from a wide range of international perspectives. The book offers examples of the many creative strategies that curators deploy to negotiate pressures to self-censor and gives evidence of curators? political acumen, ethical sagacity and resilience over the long term. It also challenges the assumption that self-censorship is something to be avoided at all costs and suggests that a decision to self-censor may sometimes be politically and ethically imperative. Curating Under Pressure serves as a corrective to the assumption that censorship pressures render practitioners impotent. It demonstrates that curatorial practice under pressure offers inspiring models of agency, ingenuity and empowerment.

Curating Under Pressure is a highly original and intellectually ambitious volume and as such will be of great interest to students and academics in the areas of museum studies, curatorial and gallery studies, art history, studio art and arts administration. The book will also be an essential tool for museum practitioners.

Part 1: Understanding self-censorship; 1 Rethinking the curator’s remit; 2 Much ado about nothing: policing of controversial art in the UK; 3 Curating contemporary global art in Doha, Qatar: anticipated "conversations,"undesirable controversies and state self-censorship; 4 No names, no titles, no further explanations; 5 Lady disrupted: self-censorship and the processes of feminist curating inSouth Africa; 6 Bishan project: efforts to build a utopian community under authoritarian rule; Part 2: Negotiating self-censorship; 7 Navigating censorship: a case from Palestine; 8 Truth or dare? Curatorial practice and artistic freedom of expression inTurkey; 9 The complexity of taking curatorial risks: case studies from East Asia; 10 Negotiating self-censorship in the representation of Colombian armed conflict; 11 Experimental curatorship in Russia: beyond contemporary art institutions;12 From Carbon Sink to WASTE LAND: a case study in navigating controversy; 13 The bigger picture: rethinking curatorial approaches to photographs of childhood; 14 Smart tactics: towards an adaptive curatorial practice

Janet Marstine is Honorary Associate Professor (retired) at the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester, UK. She writes and consults on diverse aspects of museum ethics with a particular interest in supporting the agency of practitioners to make informed ethical decisions. She sat on the Ethics Committee of the UK’s Museums Association from 2014 to 2019, helping to move their approach from one of policing to empowering.

Svetlana Mintcheva is the director of programs at the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), an alliance of US national non-profit organizations. She is the founding director of NCAC’s Arts Advocacy Program, a 20-year-old unique national initiative devoted to the arts and free expression. Dr. Mintcheva frequently speaks and writes on emerging trends in censorship.