Dept.

of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

CURATING AND ETHICS

AUTUMN 2020 / SPRING 2021

From Monday 9 November 2020

3:30-5:30pm

Autumn: on Teams / Spring: tbc

JEAN-PAUL MARTINON
j.martinon@gold.ac.uk

Course Description:

What does it mean to have an ethical position today? More specifically, what is the ethical role of
curators today? If the word “curator” derives from the Latin cura, which means “care,” then what
ethos of care should curators adopt? Finally, what can philosophy do to address and/or support
these ethical positions? This course explores the act of taking on an ethical position in curating
today. It focuses on attempting to establish some kind of ethical basis for the practice of curating.
The material explored mainly focuses on philosophical explorations in ethics, but it also takes on
board key exhibitions/projects that have defined the way curating engages ethical issues.
Authors studied are taken from both Western and non-Western traditions and range from
Aristotle, Bal, Foucault, Kant, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Lyotard, Marx, Mudimbe, Ramose, and
Spinoza. Teaching involves lectures, student presentations, and discussions of key curatorial and
philosophical texts.

Overall Year Structure:

1 Monday 9 November
2 Monday 16 November
3 Monday 23 November
4 Monday 30 November
5 Monday 7 December
Autumn 2020
Introduction to Course – Gazi/Eleey/Reilly
Cura, Care, Curating – Huberman/Foucault
Midway, Happiness – Aristotle/Flood
With God, Nature – Stewart/Spinoza/Spence
Rational & Universal – Kant/Code of Ethics

6 Date to be confirmed
7 Date to be confirmed
8 Date to be confirmed
9 Date to be confirmed
10 Date to be confirmed
Spring 2021
Plastic Ethics – Lyotard/Teniers
Exposition, Manifestation – Lyotard/Rajchman
Radical Covenant – Kierkegaard/Levinas/Caravaggio
The Egalitarian Display – Marx/Bo Bardi
Reading, Narratives – Bal/Feux Pâles

15 - 19 February Reading Week

11 Date to be confirmed Rifts or Subjects – Mudimbe/Dasgupta

12 Date to be confirmed I am, Because We Are – Ramose/Haha
13 Date to be confirmed 1½-hrs session - 3 Students Presentations + Bollaín
14 Date to be confirmed 3-hrs session - 7 Students Presentations
15 Date to be confirmed 3-hrs session - 7 Students Presentations

1
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

Essential Reading:

• In Philosophy:

-Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton, eds., The Continental Ethics Reader (London: Routledge,
2003).

-Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, translated by Robert Hurley and others (New
York: The New Press, 1994).

-Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, translated by Peter Hallward
(London: Verso, 1993).

-Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, Conversations with Philippe Nemo, translated by
Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2004).

-Kwame Anthony Appiah, Experiments in Ethics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008).
See also: https://www.nytimes.com/column/the-ethicist

-John D. Caputo, Against Ethics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

-Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 1970).

• In Visual Culture:

-Michael Bhaskar, Curation: The Power of Selection in a World of Excess (London: Piatkus,
2017).

-Maura Reilly, Curatorial Activism: Towards an Ethics of Curating (London: Thames & Hudson,
2018).

-Sue Spaid, The Philosophy of Curatorial Practice (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).

-Nina Montmann ed., Scandalous: A Reader on Art and Ethics (Berlin: Sternberg, 2013).

-Elaine A. King and Gail Levin, Ethics and the Visual Arts (New York: Allworth, 2006).

-Walead Beshty, ed., Ethics: Documents of Contemporary Art (Cambridge: MIT, 2015).

-David Balzer, Curationism: How Curating Took Over the Art World and Everything Else
(Toronto: Coach House Books, 2014).

-Joasia Krysa, ed., Curating Immateriality (New York: Autonomedia, 2006).

-Reesa Greenberg, et al., eds. Thinking about Exhibitions (London: Routledge, 1997).

-Beti Žerovc, When Attitudes Become the Norm (Paris: Les presses du reel, 2015).

-Paul O’Neill, Lucy Steeds, and Simon Sheikh, eds., Curating After the Global: Roadmaps for the
Present (Cambridge: MIT, 2019).

2
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

Participation:

-Weekly Reader’s Presentation: The task of the self-appointed Reader is to carefully study the
chosen key text(s) included in the Reader for the session (and, if possible, a few texts from the
Suggested Further Reading list) and to choose a curatorial project that reflects or evokes the
ideas put forward in the text(s). A few tips:

-The Reader’s presentation must not contextualise the author of the key text (giving a
biography, for example) or retrace the arguments contained in the key text (summarising
the text or reading some extracts, for example).

-The presentation must focus instead on a chosen curatorial project. This project must be
read and presented with the key text in mind as a source of inspiration/argumentation for
the presentation of the curatorial project.

-The presentation must therefore answer the following question: How does your curatorial
project reflect or evoke some (or all) of the arguments included in the key text(s)?

-The presentation must not reference the artwork(s), project(s), or exhibition(s) included
alongside the key text(s) in both the Course Outline (below) or the Reader. This is not a
comparative exercise between curatorial projects presented by staff and students.

-The Presentation can include a PPP, but this is not compulsory. In any case, it should not
exceed more than 15 mins. Please rehearse it.

-If you are unable to make it, please email the tutor at least 24 hours prior to the session. A
no show without warning incurs a Fail.

-Finally, because of the limited time available, no missed presentation can be reported to
another date.

Assessment:

Formative Assessment: 1 x 2,500 words essay (19 January 2021)

1 x Reader Presentation (on one of the 11 days available)

1 x Presentation (on one of the last 3 days of the Spring Term)

Summative Assessment: 1 x 8,000 words essay (27 April 2021)

3
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

AUTUMN 2020

1. Monday 9 November – Introduction to Course

• Abstract:
For this first session, we will start by defining what we mean by ethics and how to differentiate it
from morals. We will also launch into our investigation of curating and ethics and determine the
path to be undertaken on this course.

• Reader Texts:
-1. Andromache Gazi, “Exhibition Ethics: An Overview of the Major Issues,” in Journal of
Conservation and Museum Studies 12, no 4 (2014): 1-10.
-2. Peter Eleey, “What about Responsibility?” in Jen Hoffmann, ed., Ten Fundamental Questions of
Curating (Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2013), pp. 113-9.
-3. Maura Reilly, “A Call to Arms: Strategies for Change,” in Curatorial Activism: Towards an
Ethics of Curating (London: Thames & Hudson, 2018), pp. 215-25.

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Gary Edson, Museum Ethics (London: Routledge, 1997).
-Harry Philbrick, “Exhibition Ethics,” in NEMA (Fall 2005): 6–7.
-Tricia Kelleher, “Everyone is a curator in a digital world,” in Cambridge News (28.4.14).
-Jennifer Fisher, “Curators and Instagram: Affect, Relationality and Keeping in Touch,” in
Journal of Curatorial Studies 5, no. 1 (2016): 100–123.
-George P. Landow, Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
-Jean-François Lyotard and Eberhard Gruber, The Hyphen: Between Judaism and Christianity,
translated by P.-A. Brault & M. Naas (New York: Humanities Book, 1999).

2. Monday 16 November – Cura, Care, Curating

• Abstract:
As is well known, the word “curator” derives from the Latin cura, which means “care,” but what
does “to care” actually mean? In order to address this issue, we will read a text by Michel
Foucault in which he develops an ethics of care that radically challenges conventional curatorial
interpretations of this word.

• Reader Text:
-4. Anthony Huberman, “Take Care,” in Mai Abu ElDahab, et al. eds., Circular Facts
(Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2011), pp. 9–17.
-5. Michel Foucault, “On the Genealogy of Ethics,” in Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth,
translated by Robert Hurley (New York: The New Press, 1994), pp. 261-9.

• Reader for Foucault (4) only: _______________________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Michel Foucault, The Care of the Self, Volume 3 of The History of Sexuality, translated by
Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986).
-Kate Fowle, “Who Cares? Understanding the Role of the Curator Today,” in Stephen
Rand, ed., Cautionary Tales: Critical Curating (New York: apexart, 2007), pp. 10–19
-Helena Reckitt, “Support Acts: Curating, Caring and Social Reproduction,” in Journal of
Curatorial Studies 5, 1 (2016): 6–30, doi: 10.1386/ jcs.5.1.6_1.
-Stefan Nowotny, “The Curator Crosses the River,” in Jean-Paul Martinon, ed., The
Curatorial: A Philosophy of Curating (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 59-64.

4
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

3. Monday 23 November – Midway, Happiness

• Abstract:
One of the very first attempt to put forward an ethics is arguably Aristotle’s Ethics, in which he
suggests that an ethical life is lived in an intermediate way with one aim: happiness. We will
reflect on the meaning of this “intermediate way” with the exhibition Femininmasculin.

• Reader Texts:
-5. Aristotle, “Definition of Moral Virtue” and “Happiness,” in The Nicomachean Ethics, translated
by David Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 28-31 & 192-98.
-6. Catherine Flood and May Rosenthal Sloan, “Introduction,” in Food: Bigger than the Plate
(London: V&A Publishing, 2019), pp 9-27.

• Reader for Aristotle (5) only: _______________________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Richard Kraut, The Blackwell Guide to Aristotle’s Ethics (Oxford University Press, 2006).
-Amélie Rorty, Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (Berkeley: University of California, 1980).
-Stephen G. Salkever, Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
-Julia Annas, The Morality of Happiness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
-Anthony Kenny, The Aristotelian Ethics: A Study of the Relationship between the ’Eudemian’ and
’Nicomachean ethics’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978).
-Iris Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (London: Routledge, 1991).

4. Monday 30 November – With God, Nature

• Abstract:
In this session, we will look at the first modern attempt to put forward an ethics. We will explore
Spinoza’s unusual vision of God’s role and place in modern ethics. We will also reflect how
Spinoza’s work can be seen operating in the curatorial work of British artist Jo Spence.

• Reader Texts:
-7. Matthew Stewart, “A Secret Philosophy of the Whole of Things,” in The Courtier and the
Heretic (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), pp. 156-82.
-8. Baruch Spinoza, Preface to Part IV and Propositions 35 to 37 in Ethics [1677], translated by
Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1992), pp. 152-55 and 171-76.
-9. Jo Spence, Extracts of Putting Myself in the Picture (London: Camden Press, 1986).

• Reader for Stewart/Spinoza (7 & 8) only: _______________________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Steven Nadler, Spinoza's 'Ethics' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
-Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, translated by Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City
Lights Books, 1988).
-Gilles Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, translated by M. Joughin (New York: Zone
Books, 1990).
-Eccy de Jonge, Spinoza and Deep Ecology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
-David R. Keller, “Deep Ecology,” in J. Baird Callicott and Robert Frodeman, eds., Encyclopaedia of
Environmental Ethics (New York: Wadsworth, 2008), pp. 206-11.
-http://spinozaweb.org/

5
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

5. Monday 7 December – Rational & Universal

• Abstract:
A step further in the exploration of modern ethics is Kant’s attempt to put forward an ethical
maxim free of all theological reference. Resolutely rational and empirical, Kant’s ethics rest not
on happiness or God, but on a universal principle. Museums’ Codes of Ethics will help us to put
to the test Kant’s rational ethical maxims.

• Reader Texts:
-10. Immanuel Kant, Section II, in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals [1785], translated
by Allen W. Wood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 22-29.
-11. John Mayer, et al., eds., A Code of Ethics for Curators (Washington: American Association of
Museums Curators Committee, 2009).

• Reader for Kant (10) only: _______________________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Paolo Cgercgu Usai, “A Charter of Curatorial Values,” in NFSA Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1
(Spring 2006), pp. 1-10.
-Jay Fisher, et al, Professional Practices for Art Museum Curators (New York: Association of Art
Museum Curators, 2007).
-Vanessa Trevelyan, et al., Code of Ethics for Museums: Ethical principles for all who work for or
govern museums in the UK (London: Museums Association, 2008)
www.museumsassociation.org/ethics/code-of-ethics
-Alexandra Bounia, “Codes of Ethics and Museum Research,” in The Journal of Conservation and
Museum Studies 12 (1): 1-7.
-Paul Guyer, Kant’s Groundwork: Reader’s Guide (London: Continuum, 2007).
-Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics, trans. Thomas Kingsmill
Abbott (Nabu Press, 2010).
-Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Kategorien of Excess,” trans. James Gilbert-Walsh and Simon Sparks, in A
Finite Thought, ed. by Simon Sparks (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), pp. 145-6.
-Alphonso Lingis, “Part II: The Imperative,” in The Imperative (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1998), pp. 179-222.

6
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

SPRING 2021

6. Date TBC – Plastic Ethics

• Abstract:
How does a painting or image convey an ethical message without recourse to words, texts,
discourses, or narratives? In order to address this issue, we will read one of the few attempts to
explore this complex issue: Lyotard’s ground breaking Discours, Figure.

• Reader Texts:
-12. Jean-François Lyotard, Discourse, Figure, translated by Anthony Hudek and Mary Lyndon
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), pp. 3-9.
-13. Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen et al., David Teniers and the Theatre of Painting
(London: Paul Holberton, 2006).

• Reader for Lyotard (12) only: ______________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Paul Claudel, Poetic Art [1948], translated by Renee Spodheim (Port Washington:
Kennikat Press, 1969).
-David Teniers, Theatrvm Pictorium (Antwerp: Apud Iacobum Peeters, 1684).
-Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, translated by Georges Van Den
Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
-Jean-François Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, translated by lain Hamilton Grant
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015).

7. Date TBC – Exposition, Manifestation

• Abstract:
Lyotard’s exhibition, Les Immateriaux (Paris, 1985) changed the way exhibitions are understood.
Exploring Lyotard’s project is an attempt to see how exhibitions can develop an ethical position
in art and culture.

• Reader Texts:
-14. Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, translated by Georges Van Den
Abbeele (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. xi-xvi.
-15. John Rajchman, “The Postmodern Museum,” in Art in America (Oct. 1985): 111-17.

• Reader for Lyotard/Borges (first two texts below): ______________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge, translated by Geoff
Bennington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984).
-Jorge Luis Borges, “The Library of Babel,” translated by James E. Irby, in Labyrinths (London:
Penguin, 2000), pp. 78-86.
-Jean-François Lyotard, Catalogue essay for the exhibition “Les Immateriaux,” translated by Paul
Smith, in Thinking about Exhibitions, pp. 159-73.
-Robert Harvey and Mark S. Roberts, eds., Toward the Postmodern: Jean-François Lyotard
(Amherst: Humanity Books, 1998).
-Kiff Bamford, Lyotard & the Figural (London: Continuum, 2012).
-Johannes Birringer, “Overexposure,” in Performing Arts Journal 10, no. 2 (1986): 6-11.
-Paul Crowther, “Les Immateriaux and the Postmodern Sublime,” in Andrew Benjamin, ed.,
Judging Lyotard (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 192-205.

7
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

8. Date TBC – Radical Covenant

• Abstract:
In this session, we tackle the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Far from being an archaic and
obsolete narrative, this story summarises the whole problem of contemporary ethical
commitments: What do I follow? Who do I believe? Paintings by Caravaggio and a recent
exhibition will help us articulate this story.

• Reader Texts:
-16. Søren Kierkegaard, “Attunement” and “Problemata I,” in Fear and Trembling [1843],
translated by Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin Classics, 1985), pp. 44-8 and 83-95.
-17. Emmanuel Levinas, “Existence and Ethics” + “A Propos,” in Proper Names, translated by
Michael B. Smith (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 66-74 and 75-79.
-18. David Cesarani, “History Matters: Eichmann in the Dock Again,” in History Today (July
2011): 3-4.

• Reader for Kierkegaard (16) + Levinas (17) only: ______________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Jacques Derrida, “Whom to Give to (Knowing not to Know to),” in The Gift of Death, translated
by David Wills (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 53-81.
-Judith Butler, “Kierkegaard’s Speculative Despair,” in R.C. Solomon & K.M. Higgins, eds., The Age
of German Idealism (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 363-95.
-Claire Elise Katz, “Abraham and the Tempting of Virility,” in Levinas, Judaism, and the Feminine:
The Silent Footsteps of Rebecca (Indiana University Press, 2003), pp. 108-25.
-John D. Caputo, “Abraham’s Gift,” in The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion without
Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 188-212.
-Sarah Hammerschlag, “Another, Other Abraham,” in Shofar 26: 4 (Summer 2008): 74-96.

9. Date TBC – The Egalitarian Display

• Abstract:
What constitute a truly egalitarian display, for which no artists dominate the others? Can there
even be such a thing? With the help of a text by Marx and a series of technically “egalitarian”
exhibitions, we will explore the ethical differences between Liberal and Marxist egalitarianisms
and their respective potentials.

• Reader Texts:
-19. Karl Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Programme – Part I,” in Karl Marx and Frederik Engels,
Collected Works, Vol. 24 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010), pp. 80-90.
-20. Stephen Caffey - Gabriela Campagnol, “Dis/Solution: Lina Bo Bardi’s Museu de Arte de São
Paulo,” in Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies 13, no.1-5 (2015): 1-13.

• Reader for Marx (19) only: _______________________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Eric Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man (London: Continuum, 2003).
-Louis Althusser, For Marx, translated by Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 2005).
-Ernst Bloch, On Karl Marx, translated by John Maxwell (New York: Herder, 1971).
-Etienne Balibar, The Philosophy of Marx, translated by Chris Turner (London: Verso, 2017).
-Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st. Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).
-Lina Bo Bardi, Stones against diamonds (London: AA Publications, 2013).
-Lina Bo Bardi, Built Work, edited by Olivia de Oliveira (Mexico City: Gustavo Gili, 2002).

8
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

10. Date TBC – Reading, Narratives

• Abstract:
In this session, we will ask: can one interpret the materials of exhibitions as if they were a series
of signs and signifying practices and if yes, whether there is an ethical way of reading them? To
address this, we will read an essay by Bal and reflect on the exhibition Feux Pâles.

• Reader Text:
-21. Mieke Bal, “On Grouping: The Caravaggio Corner,” in Looking In: The Art of Viewing
(Amsterdam: G&B Arts, 2001), pp. 161-90.
-22. Elisabeth Lebovibi, “Philippe Thomas, Feux pâles, 1990,” in Alexander Alberro, et al., The
Artist as Curator: An Anthology (Berlin: Walther Konig 2017), pp. 197-211.

• Reader for Bal (21) only: _______________________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Mieke Bal, A Mieke Bal Reader (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006)
-Mieke Bal, Double Exposure: The Subject of Cultural Analysis (London: Routledge, 1996).
-Mieke Bal and Bryson, Norman. “Semiotics and Art History,” in The Art Bulletin LVVIII, no. 2
(June 1991): 174-208.
-Norman Bryson, “Discourse, Figure,” in Word and Image, French Painting of the Ancient Regime
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 2-28.
-Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, translated by Geoffrey Bennington and Ian McLeod
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).
-Philippe Thomas, Feux pâles: une pièce à conviction (Bordeaux: CAPC Musée d'art contemporain,
1990).

Monday 15 to Friday 19 February – Reading Week

11. Date TBC – Rifts or Subjects

• Abstract:
In this session, we will ask ourselves how to posit oneself ethically when one’s very own identity
is an unethical inheritance? In order to address this thorny ethical issue, we will read the famous
Congolese writer Valentin Y. Mudimbe and explore a curatorial project in the border regions of
north-east India.

• Reader Texts:
-23. Valentin Y Mudimbe, “Preface,” in Parables and Fables: Exegesis, Textuality, & Politics in
Central Africa (Madison: The University of Winsconsin Press, 1991), pp. ix-xxii.
-24. Anshuman Dasgupta, Project Borderland, Unpublished Introduction.

• Reader for Mudimbe (23) only: _______________________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Claude Lévi-Strauss, “Rousseau: Founder of Anthropology,” translated by M. Layton, in
Structural anthropology 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983), pp. 31-54.
-Valentin Y. Mudimbe, Tales of Faith: Religion as Political Performance in Central Africa (London:
The Athlone Press, 1997).
-Kai Kresse, “Reading Mudimbe: An Introduction,” in Journal of African Cultural Studies 17, no. 1
(June 2005): 1-9.
-Valentin Y. Mudimbe, “The Invention of Africa,” on iTunes (free lectures by J. H.
Franklin Humanities)

9
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

12. Date TBC – I am, Because We Are

• Abstract:
In this session, we will explore a second non-western ethical position: the well-known South
African notion of humanness (Ubuntu), a notion that was at the heart of a number of discourses
against the apartheid regime in South Africa prior to 1994 and still remains to this day a key
ethical project in political and religious speeches. We will then try to read this notion through
the project HaHa.

• Reader Text:
-25. Mogobe Ramose, “The Philosophy of Ubuntu and Ubuntu as Philosophy,” in African
Philosophy Through Ubuntu (Harare: Mond Books, 1999), pp. 49-66.
-26. Heather Davis, “Growing Collectives: Haha + Flood,” in Public 41 (2010): 36-47.

• Reader for Ramose (25) only: _______________________________________

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Leonhard Praeg, A Report on Ubuntu (Scottsville: KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2014).
-Leonhard Praeg, ed., Ubuntu: Curating the Archive (Scottsville: KwaZulu-Natal, 2014).
-Charles Villa-Vicencio, “Ubuntu,” in Walk with Us and Listen: Political Reconciliation in Africa
(Georgetown: Georgetown University Press, 2009), pp. 113-28.
-Wim van Binsbergen, “Ubuntu and the Globalization of Southern African Thought and Society,”
in African and Anthropological (Berlin: Lit, 2003), pp. 427-57.
-Michael Battle, Reconciliation: The Ubuntu Theology of Desmond Tutu (New York: Pilgrim Press,
2009).
-Joseph M. Nyasani, “The Ontological Significance of ‘I’ and ‘We’ in African Philosophy,” in H.
Kimmerle, ed., I, We, and Body (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1989), pp. 13-26.
-Nato Thompson, ed., Living as Form: Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011 (Cambridge MIT
Press, 2012).
-Wendy Jacob, Laurie Paler, & John Ploof, eds., With Love From Haha: Essays and Notes on a
Collective Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
-www.hahahaha.org

13. Date TBC – Presentations – Part 1 + Film

First 1½ hours – Presentations

In this and the next two sessions, signed-up participants will give a short 15-minutes
presentation of their research to date. The presentation must include a close reading of a key
text in ethics not included in the Reader or explored in class and must demonstrate how this key
text relates to a curatorial project. The latter can be anything: from a personal curating
experience to an on-going web project to an archive documenting a past exhibition. The
presentation can include a PPP. Please rehearse it, making sure it does not exceed the allocated
time slot. In addition to the Essential Reading given on page 2 of this Outline, here are further
examples for the key text in ethics (in no particular order):

-Extracts from the Bible, The Holy Qu’ran or the Kalam, the Torah, or the Talmud
-Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 13th. C. AD
-Laozi, Tao Te Ching & Zhuangzi, 5th C BC
-Martin Buber, Good and Evil: Two Interpretations, 1997
-G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, 1821
-Sayed Ahmad Khan, Writings and Speeches, 1972
-Simone Weil, Lectures in Philosophy, 1978

10
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

-David Hume, Enquiries Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751

-Mawlana Mawdudi, The Moral Foundations of the Islamic Movement, 1970
-Elizabeth Anscombe, Human Life, Action, and Ethics: Essays, 1994
-Max Scheler, Selected Philosophical Essays, 1973
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 1949
-Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures on Ethics, 1929
-Sri Aurobindo, The Divine Life, 1939
-Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, 2006
-Ibn 'Arabi, What the Seeker Needs, 1931
-Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 1981
-Agnes Heller, A Theory of Morals (General Ethics, 1988, A Philosophy of Morals, 1990,
An Ethics of Personality, 1995)
-Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, 1887
-John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy, 1970
-Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy, 1978
-Francis Herbert Bradley, Ethical Studies, 1876
-Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, 1993
-Ham Seok-heon, An Anthology, 2001
-Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking, 1989
-Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries, 1993
-Virginia Held, Ethics of Care, 2005
-Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics, 1984

Second 1½ hours – Icíar Bollaín, Even the Rain

• Abstract:
Even the Rain is an insightful “film within a film” highlighting the ongoing struggles and cycle of
exploitation of the South American indigenous peoples 500 years after Columbus’s conquest.
Starring Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros) and written by award-
winning screenwriter Paul Laverty (Sweet Sixteen, The Wind that Shakes the Barley), the film is a
heady mix of politics, ethics, art and history. Even the Rain won the Panorama Audience Award
at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival.

• Suggested Further Reading:

-Ann-Christin Holland, The Water Business: Corporations Versus People (London: Zed, 2005).
-Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Harvard University Press, 2011).
-Paolo Virno, The Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life, trans.
I. Bertoletti, J. Cascaito and A. Casson (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2004).
-Colectivo Situaciones, “On the Researcher-Militant,” translated by Sebastian Touza, in EIPCP
(March 2003) (http://eipcp.net/transversal/0406/colectivosituaciones/en)
- Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, “Grasping the Political in the Event: Interview with Maurizio
Lazzarato,” Inflexions 3 (2009) http://www.senselab.ca/inflexions/

• Websites:
Even the Rain Official Website: http://eventherain.com/

14. Date TBC – Presentations – Part 2

Same as the first 1½ hours of Week 13.

15. Date TBC – Presentations – Part 3

Same as the first 1½ hours of Week 13.

11
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

INDICATIVE (Formative and/or Summative) ESSAY QUESTIONS 2020/2021

• Requirements:

-Contents:

-Please avoid looking into the ethics of a particular artwork and focus instead on the ethics of
exhibitions and preferably group exhibitions. The essay should be about curating and ethics
and not about art and ethics.
-Please do not “go shopping” for theory. You must frame your analysis in a specific ethics.
Please choose one author (see suggestions Week 13) and read him or her ethically, that is, by
reading more than one book and the relevant secondary literature.
-Unless advised otherwise, please do not retrace issues raised in class and do not base your
essays on texts from the Reader: investigate a specific issue that is personal to you and
choose an ethical framework that are relevant to your topic.
-Please do not quote from a blog or forum and please do not assume that texts downloaded
from random websites (like www.findarticles.com or www.answers.com) are of any interest.
Please quote instead from Libraries e-resources (i.e. Goldsmiths and Senate House, for
example).
-For inspiration about writing essays in general, please read text 27 in the Reader: George
Orwell, “Why I write,” [1946], in Gangrel (Summer 1946): Unpaginated.

-Format:

-A title and the question or topic explored clearly announced in the introduction.
-The essay should be typed, double-spaced, and include foot or end-notes and a bibliography.
For guidance on format, please check the Chicago Manual of Style:
www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html
-Visual material collated should clearly and efficiently illustrate the problem researched.
Please avoid dumping this material at the end of your essay. Use it imaginatively, as if a
sketchbook or curatorial project. If you include a memory stick or DVD, please label it, and
explain its relevance in your essay. Assume that no material will be returned.

• Suggestions:

These are suggestions only. You can also devise your own question, but please check them with
your tutor.

-In 1993, the American philosopher John D. Caputo boldly claims that he is against ethics
(Against Ethics, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). What do you make of his counter-
ethics and would you apply it to your life, your exhibitions, or the curatorial endeavours of
curators you know well? This essay requires a good grasp of Caputo’s work.

-In The Writing of the Disaster, Maurice Blanchot writes “The wish of all in [concentration]
camps: ‘know what has happened,’ and at the same time, ‘never will you know’” (p. 82). What is
the ethical implication of this paradoxical statement? Drawing from an archive focusing on a
disaster, highlight the ethical difference between lived and learned knowledge. This essay
requires a good grasp of Blanchot’s work. For example of an archive focusing on a disaster (here
a civil war) see: http://www.signsofconflict.com.

12
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

-The feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray famously put forward an Ethics of Sexual Difference
[1984], translated by Caroline Burke and Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
How does she attempt to avoid strategies of domination by either gender? Discuss her work in
relation to a specific contemporary example in curating. This essay requires a good grasp of
Irigaray’s work.

-Modern memorial museums often seek to research, represent, commemorate, and teach violent
historical events (Hiroshima, Tuol Sleng, Chernobyl, District 6, Srebrenica, World Trade Centre,
for example). They are often considered places where museological ethics are expressed in the
most poignant manner. Choose a memorial museum you know well and expose the way it
responds ethically to the material exhibited. For information on these types of museums, see
Paul Williams, Memorial Museums: The Global Rush to Commemorate Atrocities (New York: Berg,
2007). For a theoretical source, see, for example, the writings of Primo Levi and Zuszsa Baross.

-Baruch Spinoza is often associated today with the Deep Ecology movement and particularly the
work of the Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess. How do you position yourself in relation to this
movement that states that the biosphere does not consist of discrete entities but rather
internally related individuals that make up an ontologically unbroken whole? Discuss with
reference to both Spinoza and Naess. This essay requires a good grasp of Naess’s work.

-Write a critical analysis of Okwui Enwezor’s numerous exhibition catalogues for Documenta XI
(Kassel: Hatje Cantz, 2002). How did his global project reflect an ethical position in curating?
Your critical analysis must include an in-depth investigation of one key theoretical reference
included in Enwezor’s catalogues.

-Contemporary discourses on the Anthropocene have spotlighted paradigm shifts in the scale of
social and ethical concerns. With reference to a specific curatorial project and a key theoretical
source (for example, Bruno Latour, Tim Mulgan, Joanna Zvlinska, Andrew Morton, Etienne
Turpin, etc.), discuss how your chosen exhibition and the accompanying theory address the
impact these shifts have had on our ethical comportments. This essay requires a good grasp of
the work of one of these authors.

-In his celebrated 1921 book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein famously
wrote that “ethics and aesthetics are one” (London: Routledge, 1961, p. 86 - 6.421). What do you
make of this statement? Your discussion must include a good reading of Wittgenstein’s many
books and essays (as well as secondary sources) and an explanation for how curating in general
or an exhibition in particular make up an aesthetic that is also an ethic.

-In her essay “What is a photograph?”, Ariella Azoulay describes a photo as a “paperclip,” an
accessory to the event itself, which is attached as a “rich document.” With reference to a
particular collection or exhibition of photographs, discuss the ethical significance of viewing a
collection as a set of “paper clips” rather than a set of self-contained signs of an event to be
“looked-at.” This essay requires a good grasp of Azoulay’s work and of its ethical significance.

-“It is an elementary experience that we appreciate the good deed more when it is done with
grace than when it is done rudely, or formlessly.” Agnes Heller, An Ethics of Personality, 1996, p.
85. If one follows Heller’s saying, then aesthetics participates in the determination,
manifestation and evaluation of moral action. Do you agree with her? Justify your response by
referencing a curatorial project. This essay requires a good grasp of Heller’s trilogy.

13
 Dept. of Visual Cultures - MA Special Subject – Curating and Ethics - VC71008C/D

Accessibility Statement

This module is intended for all students, including those with mental, physical, or cognitive
disabilities, illness, injuries, impairments, or any other personal circumstances that tend to
negatively affect equal access to education. We strive to provide an environment that is
equitable and conducive to learning for all students.

Yet, if, at any point in the term, you find yourself not able to fully access the space, content, or
experience of this module, you are welcome (but not required) to contact us by email, phone, or
during office hours to discuss your specific needs. We can then work together to arrange
appropriate adjustments.

Also, if you have a documented condition you can register with the Disability Service (contact
details below). The Disability Service arranges adjustments and provides support for students
who have a disability, long term health condition, mental health condition, or Specific Learning
Difficulty (SpLD). By making a plan through the Disability Service you can arrange appropriate
accommodations without disclosing your condition or diagnosis to course tutors. Remember, it
is never too late to request adjustments—our bodies, minds, and circumstances are
continuously changing.

Finally, any student who faces challenges securing food or housing and believes this may affect
their performance in the course is urged to contact the Student Centre and their Personal Tutor
for support and guidance.

Disability Service:

Email: disability@gold.ac.uk

Details on registration process available here:

https://www.gold.ac.uk/students/disability-support/register/

Weekly Drop-in Every Tuesday 11am-12pm in RHB 123, or email to make an appointment.

Student Centre:

The Student Centre can help with all aspects of being a student at Goldsmiths including
enrolments, fees, assessments, housing and finance advice.

Visit in person: RHB 117, Richard Hoggart Building (9am-5pm on Monday, Wednesday,
Thursday and Friday and 10am-5pm on Tuesdays)

Email: studentcentre@gold.ac.uk

Telephone: Call the Student Centre +44 (0)20 7919 7050.

14