What kind of documents do curators produce? Contemporary cases from Estonia

Abstract

What forms of documentation emerge when preparing an exhibition? And what can an art document do to other things and professionals? These questions might seem banal at first, but their impact in making art is actually very important-due to the necessary considerations of cataloguing, funding accountability, preventing damage, tracing or borrowing artworks, as well as the potential of art documents for generating knowledge and relations and reaching a wide audience. I have noted, however, the scarcity of analytical reflections on this topic, despite a growing ubiquity of documents in our everyday work. Hence, in this article, I propose to study curation as a practice of documentation and offer an analysis of what an art document can do, gathering together several examples from my own curating practice in different institutions while indicating a number of areas for further research within this framework. 1