Myths about teaching can hold you back
- Year 11
- Year 11
Artists as curators
I can understand that artists can take on the role of curator.
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Lesson details
Key learning points
- Artists may curate exhibitions to maintain control over work and engage audiences in new ways.
- Self-curation can challenge traditional power structures in the art world.
- In some cases, curation itself becomes part of the artwork.
Keywords
Audience experience - what people see, feel, think and do when they visit an exhibition or artwork
Space - often used in the context of gallery spaces, public spaces and domestic spaces
Common misconception
Only professional curators decide what is exhibited.
Throughout history and globally, artists have curated their own work. Sometimes artists self-curate but sometimes this process can be in collaboration with professional curators.
To help you plan your year 11 art and design lesson on: Artists as curators, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 11 art and design lesson on: Artists as curators, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 4 art and design lessons from the Curating an exhibition unit, dive into the full secondary art and design curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
Equipment
Pen, pencil, paper, computer access or gather research materials on a variety of artists to support students research if needed.
Licence
Lesson video
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Prior knowledge starter quiz
6 Questions
Q1.Curators are generally responsible for ...
Q2.When you visit an exhibition at a gallery, the layout has likely been decided by ...
Q3.Curating and displaying art and objects ...
Q4.True or false: Curators must choose which pieces best represent the theme or concept.
Q5.It is important for an exhibition to have ...
Q6.Match the definitions with the words.
The process of selecting and organising items in an exhibiton.
A display of items such as artworks or objects.
The way things are arranged in a space.