Criticality in Curating and Writing

Hi folks

An essay The Great Curatorial Dim-Out
by Lawrence Alloway in Thinking About Exhibitions has got me thinking about the role of the trolley - Contmporary Art Mobile Response Unit, and how it has an intereractive and educative purpose within the wider construct of the curated survey Prospect 2007. I found the excert below especially relevant thinking about Response Unit's alternative to the 'curatorial voice'.
Here's a quote
"Assuming there is an academic ideal, it can be expressed as knowledge. Clearly museums are ontinuous with universirties in the aim of training our investigative capacity and increasing self-knowledge...Curators, instead of maintaining intellectual independace which can be equated with cultural responsibility have allowed decisions to slide from their hands to others...There has been a failure of eduation in museums. This can be seen in the way they habitualy restrict the term, so that "education" has come to mean the complex of school visits, gallery guides, lectures & other community services - all peripheral to the collection and exhibitions...The curators often supply some cues and notes... but as an additional chore, not as a central activity. Actually the key educative acts are the presentation and interpretation of art both in the exhibition and catalogue..."

And in terms of catalogue essays, I found a writer who can tell me what they're for!
Ibid
"A museum catalogue in not for puffing and it is not for amatuer aesthetics. It is useful if it contains verifiable biographical, stylistic, comparative or social information in an easily consultable form. Analysis, which is not the enemy of cordiality or passion, is what is needed."
Whether y'all agree with Alloway or not, I think they are really good points to keep in mind when preparing our catalogue text.
x Paula