Interview with Juliet Kinchin

Abstract

How did you become a curator and what was the starting point?JK: I suppose the starting point was at university in Cambridge, England, when I was seriously thinking about changing to the study of architecture (A/N: from art history). I did a thesis on an architect-furniture-designer and began to realize that I really enjoyed the intellectual debates and people involved in design history rather than architectural history. I was doing a lot of research in the Victoria and Albert Museum in the department of furniture and wood works. So I was becoming very aware of the kind of people coming in and out of the museum and these different approaches and very object-based kind of studies. It was also the time of the development of design history as a freestanding discipline, intellectually it was quite exciting. I just felt it was a really lively area to be involved in. I always loved the "stuff" and even when I moved from working in museums and I moved into teaching, first at Glasgow University in the art history department, and then at the Glasgow School of Art, I always kept curating small exhibitions and teaching very much from spaces and objects. L: What does curating mean to you? Is it related to "the stuff" you love, is it about exhibitions, what does the activity of curating mean to you?JK: Well, in the sense of "curare" or "care for" or a kind of duty or responsibility I think that´s even if you are not responsible for a collection, you are responsible to a heritage or a culture and how you present it. The activity of curating is trying to communicate the kind of excitement, connections and stories that I understand to a wider public and to be doing that largely non-verbally, in the way you are making objects and parameters images talk to each other, creating narratives that are always leading the viewer or opening up questions. For me its like creating view points and arguments in a spatial and material form, of course part of that is having a deeper knowledge to be able to bring those connections or insights to the full. 17_2 revista de pesquisa em arquitetura e urbanismo iau-usp