Mayhew as Unidentified Curator
With the enlightenment an increasingly de-sacralised perspective of the processes of collecting as specialisation begins to take shape in which the individualism of the collector emerges as an important aspect of the discourse. Scientific studies in the 18th century were no longer limited to collecting and arranging elements of the universe according to a concept: now collectors wanted to make their knowledge, (acquired by way of their own researches), available to a wider circle. And so ‘selection is to be made according to the taste of the owner’. From the design of the encyclopaedia and the form of the cabinet arose the design and layout of the display room, including the designation of entrance and exit. This consideration of how a reader or visitor might approach a collection's contents forms the birth of the museum in the 18th century, and herein lie the seeds of the present day Curator of Contemporary Art, through whom works of art become worthy of being explained, collected and evaluated according to measures of quality. Scientific research within collections, up to then directed towards a passive glorification of creation, is superseded by a 'new science'. Catalogues, inventories and libraries for the purposes of study take on a new weight. The new museums had to do justice to new requirements and new ideas.Curating via collecting takes on another dimension with the effects of the industrial revolution. That which does not fit within the canon of connoisseurship is ultimately dealt with by the social Darwinism of the Empire. The rise of the modern economic state and its Imperial ambitions ensure that there is nothing that can't be bought or sold. Rubbish, waste, ephemera also become sites for reclamation, collection and transaction. Henry Mayhew lists some of the street collecting occupations of mid-nineteenth century London, as follows: A Dog Finder (The Finders, Stealers and retailers of Dogs), The Bird Catchers, The Street Finders of Collectors, Bone-Grubbers and Rag Gatherers, The 'Pure' Finders (the collectors of faeces), The Cigar-end Finders, The Old Wood Gatherers, The Dredgers or River Finders, The Sewer-Hunters, Mud Larks, Exhibitor of Mechanical Figures, and the Telescope Exhibitor.
By the late 19th century anything and everything seems to be collectable. Objects and wares of all descriptions are available to those with buying power. Off the back of the industrial revolution and Euro-centric Empires new forms of display and exhibition were modelled, the Parisian arcade being a prime example of the interface of exhibition and a fast-expanding commodity culture. The entrepreneurial spirit of the late 19th century unselfconsciously articulated, wherever possible, the taxonomical drive as a 'survival of the fittest'. Freud's 'aggression drive' which is also a 'death drive' might be pointed to as a similar motivation underlying curating. In this context curating is likened to hunting: one locates the prey, plans for the attack, acquires the prey in the presence of real or imagined competition for it, and feels elated. The prey becomes a trophy - a symbol of one's aggression and prowess. The whole realm of the 'fetish' in relation to the ethnographic collection begins to unfold when this position is explored. It is a powerful argument that has been employed throughout the twentieth century, specifically forming a central aspect in the arguments surrounding colonial expansion and post-colonialism.
Today the whole process of reification has subsumed knowledge bases, memory and the past. Heritage has replaced Britain's heavy industries of coal, steel, ships, etc as the country's biggest economic development. Nostalgia is the new raw material that steers a dominant culture focused on the re-fictionalisation of the past. Scratch the surface of this veneer and a contested space is revealed - one in which unofficial cultures, amateur tactics and personal obsessions effuse.
It is within these gaps that the Nu-Curator might forge links beyond the confines of the connoisseurship of High Art, embracing lay or amateur tactics so as to prise open the dominant culture to forge new social relations.
