Lifetime on Curating: Lumi Tan

To be honest, I did not know much about curators before talking to Lumi Tan, and I do not have much interest in understanding how the curators work. In my mind, I am not going to be becoming a curator; knowing what curators do does not go to be having a significant impact on my life. However, from the conversation that I had with Lumi Tan, she changed my perspective. Now I think curators can play a super important role, and they work closely with artists. Lumi Tan gives out specific definitions for the meaning of being a curator, “it is important for you to recognize the context you’re working in, who is the public, and you are serving the audiences.” This definition is super interesting because now I realize that either being an artist or a curator, the goal is similar, to serve the audience. From her definition, I understand that a curator can further improve or pass on the meanings that the artist wants to say to the public more. Curators do have a role in the art world. 

From the conversation with Lumi Tan, I think the curator is not an easy job to do, it does take lots of planning, and it also brings lots of time to cooperate with others, for example, artists, tech people who are responsible for lights and sound, etc. Tan described that she would shape her day differently. When she does not have a project, sometimes she would spend time visiting artist studios in the morning. Tan would spend two or three hours talking to artists; after that, she would go into her office.  In her office, she started working on helping her director develop grant applications, thinking about future projects that The Kitchen needed funding for or like other aspects of development relationship with individual donors that might help a project. During the time she has a project to work with, she spends her time working with the tech crew if it is a theater performance. When she is curating a show in the gallery, she would work closest with the artist and make all the decisions with the artist. Also, being a curator is like a liaison between the artist and the tech crew. 

In the conversation that we had with Tan, I think she is the kind of person that knows she wants to be a curator from a young age, and she did fight super hard to be a curator. She knew she loved art and loved thinking about art. From her experiences, at her young age, she settled on being a curator. When it comes to the question of, “Do you consider yourself as an artist?”, she gives out the definite answer, which is “I consider myself one that works very closely with artists.”, she does not consider herself as an artist. Tan is a curator that brought her meaning into being a curator. She considers herself a role like translating the artist’s vision into something and shares it with the public. From Tan, I learned a lot about the curator’s position, and they are using their power to curate each show and translate artists’ minds or intentions to the audiences through hard work.