Rant 64: Anticurate

Rant 64: Anticurate anticurate, mac birmingham, 2011

What does the word curate mean to you? Artist and curator Trevor Pitt has had 57 responses to this question for the anticurate show at mac birmingham; now he asks you, The Rant readers, what you think.


Anyone who knows me will tell you that I have opinions about pretty much everything and I’m not backwards in coming forwards in expressing them. But to be honest I’m a talker not a writer. 

Let’s cut to the chase… I’ve been at odds with the art establishment in its many guises of middle class politeness and pretension for what seems like forever – the fact that I’m sitting here faced with a blank screen and nothing that I really want to rant about feels a little bit weird and so I’m drawing on my latest project anticurate at mac birmingham for inspiration. 

For the anticurate exhibitions, I invited people who have no prior experience of curating to ‘curate’ a series of exhibitions. 

As part of the project we wrote to artists and curators and invited them to respond to the question ‘What does the word curate mean to you?'

Their responses will be fly-postered directly onto the walls of a gallery that sits at the heart of the public space in the arts centre. I wanted to give visitors a starting point to think about what curating might mean to them. 

We’ve had 57 responses – the same number of varieties as Heinz. Since I’ve always liked their tomato soup, that’s a good omen I feel. 

The response that came from Peter Jenkinson, the man who re-imagined art and culture in the West Midlands and who is currently brokering cultural relationships on a national platform, said the following: the subject of the email was 'Do Say…' and in the body of the email, in a green font, he wrote ‘Do Say: Great Art with Everyone’ and underneath, in red. he wrote ‘Don’t say: Great Art for Everyone.’ 

Peter signed off with ‘Is this ok Trevor’? 

Well, what do you think?


Contributed by Trevor Pitt

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