The Curatorial Rationale and Selecting a Body of Work

In the current Visual Arts guide, the exhibition is accompanied by a curatorial rationale: a piece of writing in which the student explains the thinking behind their exhibition. This lesson focuses on how to select a coherent body of work and how to write a rationale that makes the curatorial thinking clear.

Selecting a coherent body of work

The exhibition should present a considered selection, not a data dump of everything made. Strong selection rests on two pillars: quality and coherence. Quality means choosing resolved, successful works that represent the student at their best; including weak pieces drags down the impression of the whole. Coherence means choosing works that relate to one another — through theme, concept, media, or visual language — so that the exhibition reads as the wo