Curating in COVID: challenges and wins

Melbourne based curator Natalie King is no stranger to curating exhibitions across distance, having been charged with presenting Tracey Moffatt’s work for the Australian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2017, among other important international exhibitions across Japan, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, India, Thailand and New Zealand.

But she had never curated a major international exhibition entirely over Zoom – until the pandemic. The exhibition Reversible Destiny: Australian and Japanese contemporary photography opened last week at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum (TOP), as part of the Olympics Cultural Olympiad, and it’s a show King co-curated remotely during COVID, while also preparing artist Yuki Kihara’s presentation for Aotearoa/ New Zealand at the 59th Venice Biennale 2022.

Speaking at a virtual media call last week, she said: ‘Pandemic curation across borders, time zones and various stages of lockdowns has made us more determined to ensure that the imagination of artists is at the centre of society.’