Co-curation as feminist practice: exhibiting the work of Marion Adnams

ABSTRACT

This article explores the co-curation of the ‘Marion Adnams: A Singular Woman’ exhibition at Derby Museum and Art Gallery (December 2017 to March 2018). The process of co-curation is a productive and challenging way to engage with an artist’s work. The discussion adopts a feminist perspective to consider the act of curation and the considerations involved in organising and engaging with an artist’s life and work. The place of an artist within narratives of art history can be problematic and challenging and the process of drawing together a body of work for exhibition raises as many questions as it answers. However, this discussion considers the extent to which this is a constructive and significant activity and the ways in which co-curation can contribute to reincorporating artists such as Marion Adnams into art history and recuperating her work and its contribution to British art history and beyond. The approach to feminist co-curation includes a consideration of how to present a female artist’s work and the issues involved in curating an exhibition as a representation of their practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Marion Adnams
• co-curation
• exhibition
• feminism
• surrealism

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Val Wood as co-curator of the Adnams: A Singular Woman exhibition and Derby Museums, in particular Lucy Bamford, Senior Curator, for her collaboration on the exhibition. The author would also like to thank Des O’Brien for providing a soundtrack for the video installation and exhibition as a whole. The author is grateful to the Adnams Estate for access to research materials, information and artwork and also Manchester Art Gallery, Nottingham Castle Museum and Jane England for additional resources, information and support. The author is grateful to the School of Arts, University of Derby for providing a venue for the Marion Adnams Symposium.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Teresa Forde

Dr Teresa Forde is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Media at the University of Derby. She is interested in the curation and exhibition of art, film and media. Teresa is currently undertaking research for the Marion Adnams project, exploring the work of the artist, and investigating feminist approaches to arts practice. She is also working on co-curating exhibitions and has engaged with public talks and community links across film, art and media. Teresa has also published work on science fiction, memory, soundtrack and issues of representation within film and television. Her recent publications include co-editing a collection on Mad Men (Palgrave, 2019) chapters on True Blood and The L Word in Television Finales: from Howdy Doody to Girls (Syracuse UP, 2018) and ‘Olivia Dunham and the New Frontier in Fringe’ in Women's Space: Essays on Female Characters in the Twenty-first Century Science Fiction Western (McFarland, 2019). She has also published in MAI: Journal of Feminism and Visual Culture on her video installation, ‘Finding the Artist’ (2020) and has a chapter in the forthcoming Critical Pedagogy, Race and Media (Routledge).