By Rebecca Ceccatelli. Cover image by Anano Esartia.
With time, I’ve realized that studying, especially in a field like art curating, never really ends. It doesn’t stop with a degree, an internship, or even your first exhibition. If anything, that’s when it starts to shift. You stop “studying” in the formal sense, but you keep learning through conversations, mistakes, exhibitions, and, often overlooked, through reading.
When you’re caught up in practical work, it’s easy to forget the books that once shaped how you think. The ones that don’t give you quick answers or templates, but instead challenge how you see art, audiences, and your own role as a curator. They’re not always the most obvious or “useful” reads in a day-to-day sense, which is probably why they tend to slip into the background.
But I’ve learned that going back to them, or coming across them later, outside of any academic pressure, can be just as important as any hands-on experience. They slow you down. They complicate things in the best way. They remind you that curating isn’t just about organizing objects in space, but about constructing meaning, questioning narratives, and positioning yourself within a broader cultural and political context.
This is a personal selection of readings I don’t think we should forget. Some of them I encountered while studying, others I wish I had. All of them continue to shape how I approach curating long after the classroom is gone.
A Brief History of Curating: How the Role Evolved
- Karsten Schubert, The Curator’s Egg, 2000
For grounding the present in its evolution.
The Curator’s Egg traces the transformation of the curator from a figure rooted in connoisseurship to one engaged in experimental and interpretative practices. It maps out key historical moments that shaped contemporary curating, positioning exhibitions as active sites of meaning-making.
- Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum, 1995
For reading institutions critically.
In this book, Bennett looks at the museum within a broader cultural and political framework. Drawing on sociological perspectives, he explores how museums have functioned as tools of public education and social regulation, shaping collective knowledge and behavior.
- Hans Ulrich Obrist, A Brief History of Curating, 2008
For multiplicity over definition
Through a series of conversations with influential curators, Obrist builds a non-linear history of curatorial practice. The book foregrounds a plurality of approaches and ways of working, reflecting the diversity and ongoing evolution of curating.
What Is a Curator? Authorship, Mediation and Influence
- Claire Bishop, What Is a Curator?, 2012 (essay)
Embracing contradiction
Claire Bishop critically reflects on the evolving definition of the curator. She addresses the tensions between roles such as caretaker, mediator, and author, while critically engaging with the growing visibility and influence of curators.
- Lawrence Alloway, The Great Curatorial Dim, 1976 (essay)
On the limits of curatorial agency
The Great Curatorial Dim reflects on the scope and limits of curatorial agency. It considers how curators negotiate their position in relation to artworks and audiences, and how their interventions shape the conditions of display and interpretation.
- Paul O’Neill, From Museum Curator to Exhibition Auteur, 2007 (essay)
For understanding authorship
This essay explores the emergence of the curator as an authorial figure. It examines the shift from institutional roles toward more independent and creative practices, highlighting the implications of this transition for curatorial identity.
Rethinking the Exhibition: From Display to Medium
- Tony Bennett, The Exhibitionary Complex, 1988 (essay)
Seeing the exhibition as a structure
The Exhibitionary Complex frames the exhibition as part of a broader system of visibility, knowledge production, and social control. It situates exhibitions within institutional and political contexts, emphasizing their role in shaping public experience.
- Elena Filipovic, What Is an Exhibition? an essay included in Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating, edited by Jens Hoffmann
Thinking in terms of medium
What Is an Exhibition? Examines the exhibition as a medium in its own right. It explores its formal, temporal, and conceptual dimensions, questioning how meaning is produced through display.
When Artists Curate: Dissolving the Boundaries of Exhibition Making
- Vincenzo Di Rosa, La mostra come medium, 2017
Exhibiting as a language
La mostra come medium examines the exhibition as a medium in its own right, rather than a neutral framework for displaying artworks. It analyzes how curatorial choices—such as spatial design, sequencing, and narrative construction—actively produce meaning. The book situates the exhibition within a broader field of communication, where curating becomes a form of articulation and interpretation.
- Elena Filipovic, When Exhibitions Become Form, 2012 (essay)
On dissolving boundaries
When Exhibitions Become Form reflects on the historical moment in which exhibitions began to operate as autonomous forms of expression. Revisiting key curatorial practices, it explores how exhibitions can function like artworks, with their own internal logic, temporality, and authorship. The text emphasizes the shift from exhibition as a support structure to exhibition as a primary site of artistic and curatorial production.
