A Brief History of Curating

When Hans Ulrich Obrist asked the former director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Anne d'Harnoncourt, what advice she would give to a young curator entering the world of today's more popular but less experimental museums, in her response she recalled with admiration Gilbert & George's famous ode to art: "I think my advice would probably not change very much; it is to look and look and look, and then to look again, because nothing replaces looking...I am not being in Duchamp's words 'only retinal', I don't mean that. I mean to be with art – I always thought that was a wonderful phrase of Gilbert & George's, 'to be with art is all we ask'".

How can one be fully with art. In other words, can art be experienced directly in a society that has produced so much discourse and built so many structures to guide the spectator?