Paper Short Abstract:

The curatorial has proposed a shift from thinking about curating as the keeping and ordering of knowledge to the inquiry into possible other modes of telling stories. As such, it has become trans-disciplinary and offers new narrative modalities for thinking also anthropology.

Paper Abstract:

Departing from the study of independent curators of contemporary art in Germany and Italy, this paper analyses the ways in which the curatorial has become a multimodal, multidimensional field for the production and negotiation of narratives of world different from the universalist appropriation of culture prevalent in western museums of world. The latter form of storytelling, which I call worldly universalism, is rehabilitated across Europe through recourse to the liberal legacies of European anthropology. By contrast, curators engaging in practices of worldly situationism create forms of narration, of worldly storytelling, that begin from the situated and partial. For that reason, they share a post-modern anthropological sensitivity for anti-holism, partiality, and relationality. I unpack some of the possibilities and necessities of a humble anthropology that works alongside a minor curatorial grappling with world.