Curating in Asia

The conference Curating in Asia follows up a workshop in cooperation with and at Goethe-Institut Hong Kong in 2008. At that time, museum issues were the focus in the context of the ongoing project GAM – Global Art and the Museum, which was initiated at ZKM Karlsruhe in 2006. With the conference we would like to address the issue of the complex phenomenon of art curating in Asia, which involves various institutions or even creates an art context, which before had not existed. Questions such as how does art curating vary in different countries of Asia? What is the role of the curator when an infrastructure for art does not yet exist? In what way differ the roles of critics and artists when acting as curator? Is art curating sometimes just another way of art making? There is a history of the topic, embodied for instance by the artist/curator Jim Supangkat, who is member of the advisory board of the ZKM exhibition The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds after 1989 but unfortunately won’t be able to join the conference in December. He gave up early in his life the artist’s career in order to work as curator and to build up an Indonesian art scene. Or Dinh Q. Le, who left the US after he had established a successful career as an artist in order to create an institutional art scene in Vietnam by cofounding San Art, the first not-for-profit gallery in Ho Chi Minh City.