Theodor Ringborg

I have two roles. One is as the Artistic Director of Bonniers Konsthall, a sizable non-profit and influential space for contemporary art in Stockholm. The other is as a Ph.D. student with the Advanced Practices (Curatorial/Knowledge) program at Goldsmiths University. My work with the concept of the curatorial within this academic program has informed a great deal of my work at Bonniers Konsthall, which reaches tens-of-thousands of people annually. Out of a disenchantment with restrictive museological thinking many who operate in art-institutions today ask what we can do with our vast knowhow, organizational skills, resources and how we could deploy what we do differently. The curatorial is capable of encompassing meaning, affect, situation, symbolic power, efficiency and spectacle, which is required if one aims to be a relevant part of and engage in the new visual world of our audiences. This is evident not least in the current wave of scrutiny and controversy enveloping spaces for art.

Not only are issues of sponsorships or the organization of boards being raised in new ways. What gets put on display and how is being increasingly debated by a more informed audience. The concept of the curatorial has allowed those whose investment in it has a practice-based output to turn away from restrictive museological thinking where the art-object is the telos or sole object of investigation toward an approach where art is a point of departure. Debate does not end with or is restricted by the art-object when the masterful vision of museology is disrupted. Those who have engaged in the concept of the curatorial are thus better equipped to enter into productive discussion with today's audience about what we can understand by exhibitions of contemporary art