Curatorial Project Worksheet

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Your assignment: Pretend you are a curator for your own art exhibition. An art curator is
someone who works in the art gallery, researches and writes art information, places and designs
artwork within gallery spaces.
Your assignment is to create a collection of ten works that have the same thing in common. Each
of the members of your group will then create a personal art piece that fits the common theme
among all works.
Some ideas of things your collection could have in common:
 Same movement (Expressionism, Pop Art, Dadaism)
 Same time period (Baroque, Neoclassical, Renaissance, Current)
 Created in the same geographic area (Ancient Greece, Eastern Art, Canadian Art)
 Same or similar subject matter (Religious works, Landscape, Important Persons)
You will have class time to look for inspiration to choose your theme from existing artworks. If
you have an idea now of something you’d like to use as your theme, you can begin searching for
that immediately. If you need to search and look to get some ideas, that’s okay, too.
If you are stuck on finding a theme, use this brainstorming strategy:
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Step 1
Take turns saying the first thing that comes into your mind about the topic or problem. Continue
to do this until it becomes frustrating... at that point, call on the teacher to intervene with
alternative perspectives. Then continue again.
If you employ this, be strict about following the basic rules of effective brainstorming:
 write down all the ideas
 don't stop to elaborate
 no criticism
 defer judgment
 freewheeling is welcome (random ideas)
 quantity is wanted
 combination and improvement are encouraged
Step 2
The next step of brainstorming is convergent analysis; once a large number of ideas have been
generated, go back and evaluate, try combining ideas, or modifying ideas before discarding
them.
Step 3
The final step is to make judgments about the worth of the ideas you have identified.
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After you have chosen a theme, choose artworks that work as part of that theme to fit in your
gallery. Find 15-20 artworks to begin with and then narrow that number to 10 artworks. You
should try to find information to tell us about each of the ten artworks. These will be presented in
your gallery as artist statements. (The information you need to include is in the second handout)
Some resources for finding information about your theme or ideas for creating your artwork that
fits in the theme (which may be of any medium or type):
- Dallas Museum of Art — http://www.dma.org/ and http://www.dmaconnect.org/
- Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Walker Art Center —http://www.artsconnected.org/
- San Francisco Museum of Modern Art —http://www.sfmoma.org/
- National Gallery of Art — http://www.nga.gov/
- Smithsonian Institution —http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/
- Met Museum http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/metkids/

Artwork Statements
Theme of the Gallery:
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Artwork #1
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork #2
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork #3
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork #4
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork #5
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork #6
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork #7
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork #8
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork #9
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork #10
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork – Personal Piece
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork – Personal Piece
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Artwork – Personal Piece
Title of the Work:___________________________________________________________
Artist Name:________________________________________________________________
Date of the Work:____________________________________________________________
A short paragraph (3-4 sentences) that tells us something we wouldn’t know about the painting
from looking quickly. This can be either historical information, artistic technique information,
information about the artist, or information about what the piece means to you. Also include how
this work is important to the gallery and fits into the gallery’s theme.
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Creating a Curatorial Statement

Answer all these questions in your curatorial statement:
What is your theme?
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Why did you pick it?
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Did you find lots of works that fit this theme or was it difficult to find works?
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What do you want people to know about your theme?
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