In Curatorial Studies, Maureen Connor offers insight into the process of curating, which often remains enigmatic even to many devoted art viewers. The video is a behind-the-scenes look at how artists are selected, how an exhibition concept evolves, and how the artists’ projects progress from the initial idea presented to the final work. In August Connor began documenting the process as a fly-on-the-wall. Over the course of several days, she taped curators Jennifer McGregor and Erica Strongin reviewing over 130 artists’ submissions as they narrowed the pool to 18 finalists. In September, she followed the curators as they met with artists in their studios and at Wave Hill. She observed the curators as they came to a final decision concerning the artists to be included in Survive/Thrive/Alive. Finally, she followed the development the artists’ installations. From the over 60 hours of tape she edited a video that serves as a companion piece, or alternate way of considering the exhibition.

The concept and methodology for Curatorial Studies evolved through discussions with the curators about ways to make their work visible to the public. This project follows Personnel: An Exploration of the Art Institution as a Workplace, a series of site-specific installations in which the attitudes, needs and desires of the staff at various museums and galleries become the subject.

Maureen Connor has exhibited extensively with solo exhibitions at the Queens Museum of Art, Queens, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and has been included in numerous group exhibitions most recently at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, New York, NY; Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Whyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, Poland; and the Katonah Museum, Katonah, NY. She was an artist-in-residence at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts, New York, NY, and has received fellowships and grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, in addition to a Guggenheim Fellowship.