Why I Do What I Do: Twenty Global Curators Speak

Twenty renowned international curators write about the exhibition or project that transformed their ideas about curating.

Across the globe, thousands of curators at museums and art centers bring together the world’s artists, thinkers, and activists to grapple with the urgent issues of contemporary society. Yet the ways that curators go about their work happens behind closed doors. For this fourth volume of the series ＂Thoughts on Curating,＂ twenty renowned curators from around the world write about a single exhibition or curatorial project they created and how it illuminated their thinking about their work as curators and about curating in general as a crucial means of cultural analysis, creative production, and influence in our lives today.

Steven Henry Madoff, an award-winning writer, editor, and poet, has written extensively on contemporary art for such publications as Artforum, ARTnews, Modern Painters, the New York Times, and Time magazine, and published numerous monographs on leading international artists. He is the Founding Chair of the master’s degree program in curatorial practice at the School of Visual Arts in New York and previously served as Senior Critic at Yale University’s School of Art.