Performing Arts Curation as a Means of Advocating for Change in Cultural Policy
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Abstract
This article explores the potentials of performing arts curation to challenge current European cultural policies. It opens with a brief comparison of the genealogy of the curator in the visual and performing arts. Suzana Milevska's concept of “curatorial agency” and contemporary understandings of the “curator as an intermediary” serve to highlight the discrepancies between the socio-political conditions of production and circulation in the two fields. The second part of the article draws on interviews with five performing arts curators from independent organizations active within European project networks to further examine the implications of curating as a mediating cultural-political practice. Finally, in a context where cultural policies increasingly support market-oriented cultural actors, it calls for a stronger accountability of the performing arts curator in the negotiation of values between the artistic community, audiences, and policymakers.
Contributor Notes
Ana Letunić is a contemporary performing arts producer, curator, and researcher based in Croatia and Germany, and an assistant professor at the Academy of Dramatic Arts in Zagreb. She holds an MA in International Performance Research from the University of Warwick and is currently completing her PhD in the intersection of performance studies and cultural policy at the University of Hildesheim and University of Arts in Belgrade.