Notes on Curating on the Internet

Reflections and best practices for web-based exhibitions from our combined 10+ years experience in the field

Welcome to BLOG by LAN Party, the monthly newsletter by Vienna Kim & Benoit Palop that investigates and critiques how we engage with curation, art & culture in the digital and onchain era.

If you would like to support our work, the best way to do so is to subscribe to our Hypersub or Substack and share things that you like in our newsletter on social media! You can even earn 10% on all referrals on Hypersub. :-) Let's dig in.

---

SURFACING, reelaesthete, 2024 (WIP)

The act of curating is an expanded practice in the world today. But the word ‘curator’ is so easily fixed upon the biographies of Instagram influencers and associated with Pinterest boards that it begs the question: ‘wtf does a curator even do?’ At a minimum, the role of a curator is understood as ‘choosing things and putting them together to make them look pretty or appealing.’ If you’re lucky, maybe there is a ‘concept’ behind the ‘aesthetic’ arrangement of images.¹ Used in this way, the term ‘curator’ is just a marketing tactic to make other jobs and roles (interior designer, fashion blogger, chef, DJ, etc.) feel more elevated, artistic, and exclusive.

Of course, as curators of digital art for online exhibitions, one could argue that that’s exactly what we do. Since we rarely handle physical art objects, there isn’t the need for the preservation, logistics, archiving and registrar-related tasks that maybe a ‘traditional’ curator would consider. As digital art curators, we pick and choose certain artwork files, put them together on a web page or platform, and write a lil’ text that explains a bit about why we chose such and such artist. Right? That’s what we do as digital art curators. Right?

Yes and no. Many digital art curators do just this, and are still able to make some incredible contributions to the field through their ideas, approaches and writings alone. But there are also curators that absolutely need to consider the preservation and archival aspects of digital art, and, in our opinion, more and more contemporary curators should be taking this into consideration. Though the role of a curator has indeed evolved in the 21st century in response to social media, and an art curator’s day-to-day life will undoubtedly look different for each person depending on what kind of art you curate, and what kind of institution you work for (including freelance and self-employed curators), we believe a clarification of the role of a digital art curator is due. This month’s text delves into some of the best practices and approaches that we believe are useful to adopt when considering the curatorial act, specifically when one is curating a web-based exhibition. Enjoy! ✧⋆٩(ˊᗜˋ )و ♡✧