My five year old could do better: the accessible art museum and the contemporary art curator

Abstract

This thesis explores the views and opinions of contemporary art curators regarding a continuing debate that they are faced with in their profession: the need to improve accessibility to publicly-funded art museums. Improving access is a difficult task because of the challenging aspect of contemporary art. Through a set of semi-structured interviews, three issues are addressed: first, what challenges does the issue of accessibility create for the contemporary art curator; second, whether or not curators believe the quality of exhibitions will be lowered by making a show more accessible; third, what type of art curators feel is appropriate to show in a publicly-funded art museum. This study attempts to explore the issue of access from the perspective of the contemporary art curator.