DJ Curator: Argus & Medusa

An educational programme from our permanent offer The Role of Art / Roles in Art, connected with the exhibition Argus & Medusa: On Hope in Dark Times.

Role: Curator

The DJ Curator educational programme aims to familiarise pupils with the role of the curator in the contemporary art world, highlighting the importance of selection and choice. And the unique exhibition project Argus & Medusa presents several interesting ‘issues’ from the fields of media and the art world. First and foremost, you have the opportunity to see an absolutely faithful period copy of Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1818–1819), which hangs in the Louvre (and is not available for loan); a copy created forty years after the original was painted by Pierre-Désiré Guillemet and Étienne Antoine Eugène Ronjat due to the original’s poor condition.

There are also several rooms featuring artists’ responses to Géricault’s painting – a wide variety of shifts in meaning, narrative, technique and reinterpretations in light of today’s reality. It is a rich selection, as the power of the central work provides plenty to choose from. The very circumstances surrounding the origin of the subject matter are also crucial. The young artist Théodore Géricault was deeply moved by an event that received widespread media coverage at the time – the maritime disaster involving the frigate Medusa, in which several dozen people lost their lives needlessly and which shook society at the time. Géricault studied the case thoroughly, and the resulting painting was revolutionary in its day not only for its realism but also for the fact that it dealt with a current event – a completely unusual choice at the beginning of the 19th century.

Through the layout of the Argus & Medusa exhibition, students will explore the important role that ‘selection’ plays in the art world. To select means to choose, to decide, to make a definitive choice – skills that are essential not only in the art world, but also for life in today’s world, which is oversaturated with visual stimuli.

Art is not a toy that people have created to keep themselves from getting bored. Art is a specific language and medium through which we spend our whole lives learning to communicate – just as we communicate in our mother tongue, we can also speak the language of art, and the curator is a guide who tries to help us find our way. Their choices and selections limit us, but at the same time push us forward. It is the curator who has the final say, who presents art to the public, seeks out artists, or reflects on art, and passes on this understanding to others, much as a DJ does with music.

As part of the programme, following an introductory discussion held directly within the exhibition, students will work in groups to try out the selection and presentation process described above, using digital technologies. They can then continue to work on the results in their own school environment.