Project Description:
While with the institutionalization of contemporary art in former socialist countries, curatorship was accepted as a necessary practice for art representation, the title “curator” entered into the art lexicon in name only. Curatorship as a profession with its own rights and duties largely failed to materialize. Being initially a Western concept, the word “curator” was accepted in post-Soviet Armenian artistic circles as a Western term that possessed magical power and seductive force due, largely, to its alien and “superior” origins in the West. However, there were not and still are not professionally trained curators in the field. With a few exceptions, most exhibitions and related projects are carried out by artists or non-professionals. The result is miscommunication and growing isolationalist tendencies not only between artists themselves but between local art critics
and art historians as well. In its turn, this is reflected on the level of the involvement of contemporary artists and theorists from the so-called ”East” into international exhibitions and projects and remains an obstacle for a constructive and creative dialogue. The seminars and the workshop will center on the relation of the art critic and curator on the one hand and curator-artist on the other, in the face of globalization/westernization of the art market and big exhibitions; i. e. biennales, art fairs and festivals as one of the outcomes of these processes that have penetrated into former socialist countries since the mid-1990’s. The program
will focus on curatorship as a critical practice, and particularly, the curator as someone who combines the management of relations (artist-curator, artist-critics, artist-society) with the function of evaluation. We will discuss historically and culturally unique art events and practices where the curator combining the roles of a presenter and a critic has chosen different strategies of representation on the one hand and communication on the other in order to serve as a mediator between the artist and the audience.

Participants: Arpi Adamyan (Armenia), Mary Amirkhanyan (Armenia), Rael Artel (Estonia), Anna Bitkina (Russia), Irina Chkhaidze (Georgia), Estzer Lazar (Hungary), Karina Galimzyanova (Kyrgyztan), Marianna Hovhanissyan (Armenia), Petra Kapš (Slovenia), Dastan Kozhakhmetov (Kazakhstan), Sorana Muntenau (Romania), Azat Sargsyan (Armenia), Seda Shekoyan (Armenia), Joanna Sokolowska (Poland), Marko Stamenkovic (Serbia), Ani Soukiassian (Armenia), Nadia Tsulukidze (Georgia), Arpine Tokmadjayan (Armenia), Vladimir Us (Moldova).

2007 is marked by several major exhibitions in the United States that acknowledge the contribution of women artists (collectives, critics, curators, theorists, etc.) and deal with the influence of feminism on the international art scene. One of these examines the historical foundations (1965-1980) of the feminist revolution in art: http://www.moca.org/wack/?p=52#more-52 Another offers a more current and global perspectives on the topic, 1990s to the present: https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/global_feminisms/
During the first half of the course we will discuss the contexts, subtexts and curatorial approaches that inform such international exhibits. The ideological frameworks and the possible causes for the absence of certain cultural geographies in such undertakings will be addressed. We will explore the works of Armenian
women artists internationally covering the post WWII period to the present. National, Transnational and Diaspora narratives as it relates to artistic and curatorial practice will be explored through case studies including but not limited to:
Sniper’s Nest: Art that has Lived with Lucy R. Lippard (Neery Melkonian, curator)
http://www.bard.edu/ccs/exhibitions/past/index.php?eid=2350
Creative Synthesis (Arevik Arevshatyan, Curator)
Nina Katchadourian: All Forms of Attraction (Ian Berry, Curator)
http://tang.skidmore.edu/4/exhibitions/doc/887/
For the second part of the course students will develop a ‘chapter’ towards a larger future exhibition that deals with Armenian Women Artists and International Feminism utilizing the digitally reproducible photographic archive of the Near East Foundation (NEF) – the first international American philanthropic organization. http://www.neareast.org/main/pioneer.aspx
Briefly: Through a brilliant and effective PR, marketing and advocacy campaign at the turn of the last century this groundbreaking American foundation raised billions of dollars to establish dozens of orphanages (in Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, France, Greece and Alexandropol-Armenia) to help countless survivors – mainly children - from the Armenian Catastrophe. In retrospect, hundreds of rarely seen photographs (selected from thousands) combined with historical NEF campaign literature, provide fascinating accounts of how an institution reconstructed or reorganized the Armenian polity in the aftermath of 1915. This proposed curatorial project or ‘work in progress’ invites rethinking of the role played by such rehabilitation programs in constructing modern Armenian identity, and the effects they have had in defining Armenian women in contemporary society. For comparison a related curatorial model will be considered:
http://www.nyu.edu/greyart/exhibits/mapping/mappinghome.htm
The course also offers an opportunity to think through different types of collections (i.e. private Vs public) and the various forms of knowledge/values/meanings they extend to their respective audiences. In addition to slide presentations, recommended readings for the course include texts related to the links cited above. Corresponding exhibition catalogues will be available to the class.

Neery Melkonian is an independent critic, curator and an advisor based in New York City. As Associate Director of the Center for Curatorial Studies Museum at Bard College, and the Director of Visual Arts programming at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, Melkonian has organized over twenty solo
exhibitions and two traveling group-exhibits. She has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogs as well as reviews/interviews to publications such as Afterimage, AIM, Al-Jadid, Art Papers, Sculpture and Visions. Recently she guest edited a special issue of ARARAT quarterly dealing with Nagorno-Karabagh.
She has lectured/conducted workshops on topics related to aesthetics of displacement, globalization and trans-cultural geographies. With Defne Ayas she is currently developing a series of Armenian & Turkish artist collaborations called Blind Dates. She is also working on a book dealing with International Armenian Modernism.

A History of Exposition
5 Sessions
The five meetings will be articulated around outstanding exhibitions organized in Europe since 1969, the year when the exhibition When Attitudes Become Form (Harald Szeeman) was organized. It signaled a major transformation not only in contemporary art production but also in its display. In the context of the idea of historical exhibitions the way Pontus Hulten, then director of the National Museum of Modern Art could conceptualize them, it will be interesting to study Paris-Berlin (1978) and Paris-Moscow (1979) which are among the first of large-scale exhibitions presented at the Center George Pompidou.
Another large exhibition impossible to overlook, Magicians of the Earth (1989) will be it analyzed in particular for its theoretical importance and the way in which it allowed the emergence of critical thoughts opening for the first time beyond the borders of Western Europe and the United States.
Lastly, Documenta 11 will be presented in the context of the post-colonial critique, which will allow us to think of the concepts of displacements of territories, voyages and transcultural productions. The last meeting will be devoted to the experiment with monographic exhibitions starting from
Beuys’ Block installed by the artist at the museum of Darmstadt in 1970. The interpretation of this installation will be accompanied by the viewing of images of the exposition of Sarkis carried out in the same museum in 2002.

Session 1- When Attitudes Become Form, Bern, 1969
Session 2- Paris-Berlin, Paris-Moscow, Paris, 1978, 1979
Session 3- Magicians of the Earth, Paris, 1989
Session 4 - Documenta 11, Kassel, 2002
Session 5 -Joseph Beuys, Sarkis, Darmstadt, 1970, 2002

Elvan Zabunyan is a contemporary art historian and art critic based in Paris. She is Associate Professor at the Rennes University (Britanny, France) where for several years she has been the director of the Curatorial
Program in the Art History Department. She is currently associate researcher in CENA (Centre for North American Studies at the EHESS, Paris) and CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). She has published numerous essays on contemporary visual arts. She is the author of Black is a Color : A history of Contemporary African American Art (Paris : Dis Voir, 2004) published in English in 2005 (Dis Voir). She is also working on feminist art and theories at the turn of the 1970s and on
the connection between history of contemporary art and postcolonialism. Her current research is based on the work of several women artists and writers constructing a conceptual and visualreflection on the idea of a
cultural and geographical displacement.

Critical Writing Workshop
5 sessions
At the "Critical writing" workshop we will discuss the theoretical
platforms of critical practice and theoretical and curatorial practices in
contemporary art. The goal of the course is to introduce the students to
analytical relationship to the discursive problems and questions of power in contemporary art and culture. We will discuss the problems of the ways
of writing theoretical texts, analysis of art works and art systems.
Session 1 - Theory of criticism (lecture)
Session 2 - Models of critical writing 1 (lecture)
Session 3 - Models of critical writing 2(lecture)
Session 4 - Analysis of art work (international art and art in a local context)
Session 5 - Exercise in writing a critical text (based on the analyses of art work)
Session 6- Analyze of art context
Session 7 - Exercise in writing a critical text (based on the analyses of art context)
Session 8- Analyses of artist (based on the analyses of artist life and work)
Session 9 - Exercise in writing a critical text (based on the analyses of artist)
Session 10- Reading, analyzing and discussing the written texts

Misko Suvakovic (Belgrade, 1954) is a professor of aesthetics and theory of
art. He teaches in the Faculty of Music and Interdisciplinary studies at the University of Arts in Belgrade. He is an author and co-editor of twenty two books on contemporary art and theory