Socioplastics 11850 Same Artworks, Different History
An exhibition can construct a different account of art history while keeping every artwork in its collection. CuratorialSorting [11095] studies how sequence, grouping, omission and room labels distribute visibility and interpretive authority. The first work visitors encounter, the route between rooms and the language beside each object shape how the exhibition’s argument becomes available to its public. Okwui Enwezor’s curatorial projects expand historical narratives through transnational perspectives. Griselda Pollock examines the writing of art history and the formation of its canon. Hans Ulrich Obrist studies curatorial practice through exhibitions and conversations. Their approaches help show how display decisions produce relations among artworks, histories and audiences. A checklist records the objects present; the arrangement makes a claim about how they belong together. An arrangement audit could compare alternative floor plans, labels and sequences using the same works. It would record which histories become prominent, what visitors can access and how the exhibition addresses different audiences. Visitor observation and interviews could reveal how people move, pause and interpret the sequence. The curatorial team could use this evidence to explain its choices and revise the display. CuratorialSorting makes exhibition order available for analysis as a form of historical argument. It helps institutions connect selection with arrangement and public interpretation. The exhibition becomes more legible when its sequence and the relations it creates are documented. The audit could also document how catalogue categories and historical periods shape the route through the exhibition. A short public note would explain the team’s ordering principles and identify the sources that informed them. This gives visitors a way to read sequence as part of the exhibition’s argument.
REFERENCES
Enwezor, O. (ed.) (2001) The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994. Munich: Prestel.
Obrist, H.U. (2014) Ways of Curating. London: Allen Lane.
Pollock, G. (1999) Differencing the Canon: Feminist Desire and the Writing of Art’s Histories. London: Routledge.
CITE AS
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics, LAPIEZA-LAB, Madrid.
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