Get Together Day Two | Navigating Power in Contemporary Curating

Cukrarna Gallery, Ljubljana: Between Memory and the Contemporary
Alenka Gregorič | 10am – 10:45am
This presentation examines the evolution of Cukrarna Gallery, part of the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana (MGML), and its transformation from a historically charged site into a contemporary art centre. Originally opened as a sugar refinery in 1828, Cukrarna has undergone successive industrial, military, social and residential uses, accumulating a powerful presence in Ljubljana’s collective memory. In September 2021, it reopened as a contemporary art space in the tradition of a Kunsthalle, developing a programme that brings together exhibitions, artistic production, research, experimentation, discursive activities and international collaborations. Its transformation raises questions about how a site with such a complex history can be reimagined as a dynamic platform for contemporary artistic practice and exchange. Alenka Gregorič will discuss how Cukrarna’s programme negotiates between heritage and contemporary art, while exploring the institution’s role in fostering new forms of artistic exchange, dialogue and public engagement. 

The Politicisation of Institutional Programming
Ralph Rugoff |10:45am – 11:30am
This presentation will explore how institutions can uphold James Baldwin’s notion that artists are here to disturb the peace. Over the past two decades, a key aspect of disrupting the status quo has been expanding the parameters of the conversations that take place in galleries, as well as the diversity of the participating artists and audiences. Ralph Rugoff’s work as a curator has also drawn on artist Mike Kelley’s insight that art’s social function is to provide ‘negative joy’ – an experience combining both pleasure and critical thinking. Reviewing exhibitions from his time at the Hayward Gallery, Rugoff will discuss some ways of trying to do this. While considering how to reach a broader public, it helps to fashion exhibitions that highlight the dynamic, conversation-like character of art, and that invite audiences to recognise their own indispensable role in this collaboration.

L’Internationale: A Mission Statement in Times of Emergency
Nick Aikens | 11:45am – 12:30pm
This talk will be structured around the seven-point mission statement of L’Internationale, a European confederation of 16 museums, arts organisations and universities. It will be framed by the urgency of the present conjuncture and the need to rethink the public sphere in times of genocide, militarisation, and ecological collapse. The mission statement, co-written by its board, outlines the current vision of L’Internationale, almost 15 years after its founding. Starting with a small cluster of European museums, L’Internationale began as a propositional coalition to situate modern and contemporary art in different social and political histories and avoid the homogenisation threatened by the market, private investment and franchise museums. Today, it has evolved to include universities, non-collecting institutions and coalitions between art and activism. Through a reading of the statement, the talk will turn to past and present propositions for shared heritage, constituency-led work, a museum of the commons, the de-centering of European narratives and epistemologies, and ecologising museums.

Lahore Biennale 03: A Case Study for 21^st Century Globalism
John Tain | 12:30pm – 1:15pm 
The third edition of the Lahore Biennale emerged under the sign of conjoined emergencies. The world was still coping with a pandemic, with uneven effects across different regions; meanwhile Pakistan was recovering from the devastating floods of 2022, an unnatural disaster induced by climate crisis that killed thousands and displaced millions. In moving ahead with the biennial exhibition, the organisers and curator John Tain were compelled to ensure that the exhibition would address inequities and blindnesses made obvious by both catastrophes and, where possible, empower local communities. The presentation lays out the ways in which the project proposes alternatives for comprehending globalism and how art exhibitions can speak to the social.

Queering Exhibitions 
João Laia | 2pm – 2:45pm 
João Laia’s presentation explores exhibition-making from an expanded queer perspective. It frames exhibitions as liminal, cross-contaminated spaces, composed of spatial and symbolic layers, while highlighting holistic approaches that move beyond the predominance of visuality in favour of strategies that activate a broad sensorial range. Performativity offers a relevant position from which to analyse queering exhibitions, understood as an intensification of simultaneous presence in space and time, enacting a seductive position and fostering empathy and a sense of community by building a temporary social forum. Time is also reframed: presentness, or the now, is understood as relevant today, a position that includes both speculative approaches and re-readings of the past. Case studies include projects such as Hybridize or Disappear, Foreign Bodies, 10000 Years Later Between Venus and Mars, Drowning in a Sea of Data, In the Depth Heat Leaks, Forms of the Surrounding Futures, Inflammation and Surface Disorder.

Art, Politics, Influence, and the Meaning of Public Programmes When Trust Is Low
Nato Thompson | 2:45pm – 3:30pm 
At a moment when trust in institutions is low, public programmes cannot simply perform relevance. They must ask what kinds of relationships, forms of attention, and shared meaning they actually produce. Drawing from his forthcoming book, Making a Life of Art, Nato Thompson will consider art not as an object apart from the world, but as a practice made in the middle of social, political, economic, and personal life. How do artists and curators work when publics are fragmented, attention is exhausted, and influence often feels captured by markets, platforms, and power? Through examples from Creative Time, The Alternative Art School, and recent work with artists and institutions, he will explore public programming as a space for encounter rather than persuasion. The question is not only how art responds to politics, but how cultural work can help rebuild the conditions for listening, imagination, and collective life.