Critical Panel

Over the course of an hour, Zoom attendees had the opportunity to hear about three critical projects featured in Curatorial A(i)gents: This Recommendation System Is Broken, Igùn, and Second Look. For background, Curatorial A(i)gents was a metaLAB exhibition that featured 11 projects centered on the theme of AI and curatorial practice. The projects utilized the Harvard Art Museums digital collections, or data, and were exhibited at the Museums’ Lightbox Gallery in spring 2022. This recorded talk* features a discussion between the artists and designers of Curatorial A(i)gents who’ve applied a critical eye to machine learning and collection practices: Riffing on the shopping systems found in streaming media and online markets in This Recommendation System is Broken, Giulia Taurino and Jonatan Reyes play with our museum-going expectations as consumers and viewers; in Ocean Amplification, Lins Derry’s Second Look reveals vital assumptions about gender and sentiment at play in art history; and Igún by Minne Atairu draws attention to the 17-year gap of artistic production in Benin brought about by the 1897 British invasion by generating conceptual sculptures of what ‘could’ have existed during this gap.

*Closed captioning available!