Editorial

The second issue of the History and Theory: Protocols, is dedicated to the role of museums, galleries and curators take in shaping the art scene.

Though deeply rooted in our daily routine life, exhibition spaces of all sorts, still to this day elicit the question as to their legitimacy: are they necessary for the dissemination of art, aesthetic values, political points of view, knowledge, memory, identity, etc., or – in a roundabout way they implicitly serve undercurrent (yet dominant) intricate forces which compel and control the shape of our culture. Would we say that what is displayed in an exhibition truly represents and honestly renders our zeitgeist, or – still to this day, even in democratic free countries, curators manipulate us to conform to preconditioned values?

In other words – can we trust museums and consider them as sources of information, can we take them as "sites of global and local knowledge" as suggested by Sophia Acord, or should we treat the museum and the curator as critics of culture – both undermining traditional concepts of exhibiting works of art, putting artistic values in a new context, with the intention to interpret curatorship as an Iconoclast action.

These questions, yet from another angle, reiterate themselves in papers by Barbara Bloemink and  Swaiatkiewicz-Mosny-Slezak. Both papers maintain that without exhibiting art objects by a conscientious curator who deliberately constructs new and unfamiliar points of view, we would not be aware of the likeness between what is traditionally considered as works of art and works of design (Bloemink), and never be able to constitute a local identity to those remote from art centers (Swaiatkiewics et al).

It is in this vein that Barbara Leftih explores the significance of ethnical marked objects and their authenticity for the process of identity shaping and the politics of representation. Having mentioned the word 'representation' – the closing paper by Blich, points at the logic of the curator's dilemma: what should or should not be included in an exhibition, are there necessary conditions for representing artistic values, and what is the difference between a display of objects and their representation.

Reading the papers published raises the questions 'what are museums for?', 'what is a curator for?' Do they exist for entertaining, for the wealth and benefit of the city they are in, or do they exist for the preservation of precious collections? If so, then having museums and curators is all to the good. But if in fact they also proliferate knowledge, extend curiosity, esteem identity, then museums and curators are necessary for the well being of our society.

To end my editorial I deeply want to thank my two colleagues – Dana Arieli-Horowitz and Moshe Elhanati. A special thanks goes to Neora Shem-Shaul and Adraba people.

Ben Baruch Blich

Chief editor