AGENCY: A curatorial intensive in three questions How do I learn? How do I act? How do I imagine?
AGENCY brings together Clémentine Deliss, Kimberley Moulton, and Megan Tamati-Quennell for a three-day intensive exploring curatorial practice through three questions: How do I learn? How do I act? How do I imagine?
Presented as part of CRIT: Art learning since 1987, Artspace Aotearoa 17 July – 26 September and the Hōtoke season of exhibitions at Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery 4 July – 11 October, the symposium responds to the limited formal frameworks for curatorial learning, exchange, and imagining in Aotearoa. This symposium foregrounds the vital role that rigorous and imaginative curatorial practice plays within contemporary art ecologies. Lectures articulate current positions in curatorial thinking and practice and conversational workshops deepen and test these ideas collectively. The programme cultivates reflection, resource sharing, peer-to-peer learning, and the imagining of alternative futures for curatorial practice.
As a group, we will examine methods and positions both within and beyond institutional settings, while addressing the specific conditions shaping curatorial work in Aotearoa—where curatorial labour remains unevenly resourced, and inconsistently defined. At the centre of the symposium is a generative question: what can the curator do today?
Workshop attendance is free and requires an application which closes on Friday 19 June and is limited to 25 participants.
To apply for the workshop component of intensive, please email your CV and a statement of interest (max 300 words)—including one question you would ask one of three speakers—to bridget@artspace.org.nz by 5pm Friday 19 June. We accept applications as one page pdf, or under 3 minute video or audio format. Workshop participants are required to attend all lectures and both workshops.
We strongly encourage practitioners applying from outside of Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington to apply for the National Services Te Paerangi Travel Subsidy Grant to assist with travel and accommodation costs associated with participation.
Information on the grant can be found here.
The lecture programme is open and free to the public until maximum capacity is reached. Full lecture programme details are listed on our events page.
AGENCY is presented by Artspace Aotearoa and Te Pātaka Toi Adam Art Gallery and supported by Chartwell Trust, Goethe Institut, National Services Te Paerangi, and Toi o Aotearoa Creative New Zealand Te Manu Ka Tau International Delegates Programme.
Symposium Schedule
Ngā Mokopuna, 42–50 Kelburn Parade on Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington campus, Wellington. Lectures will be held in Aho Ruruku, the entry level amphitheatre of Ngā Mokopuna, and workshops within the same building. Everyone is welcome to all parts of the symposium programme except the workshops which are fully booked. Kai is provided at noted times.
Friday 14 August
5:30pm Arrival
5:45–6:00pm Hosts welcome
6:00–6:15pm Opening address Abby Cunnane
6:15–7:30pm How do I learn?: Restoring the Spirit of Collections and Place, an Indigenous space-time curatorial methodology. A lecture by Kimberley Moulton
7:30pm Shared kai (all welcome, please RSVP for numbers)
Saturday 15 August
10am–12.00 How do I learn? A workshop led by Kimberely Moulton with Bridget Riggir-Cuddy
12.30pm–1.30pm Lunch (workshop participants only)
2pm–3pm How do I act?: Modus Operandi. A lecture by Clémentine Deliss
3–3.30pm Afternoon tea (all welcome)
3.30–5.30pm How do I act? A workshop led by Clémentine Deliss with Ruth Buchanan
6pm Beer and chips (all welcome)
7pm–8pm How do I imagine?: Ihi: The poetics of possibility. A lecture by Megan Tamati-Quennell
8.15pm Closing words by Abby Cunnane
Sunday 16 August
11am–1pm How do I imagine? A walk at Ōtari-Wilton Bush
Meet at entrance, 150 Wilton Rd, Wilton, Te Whanganui-a-Tara
Biographies
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Clémentine Deliss works across the borders of contemporary art, curatorial practice, and publishing. She studied art practice in Vienna, and later social anthropology in Vienna, Paris, and London, and received her Ph.D. from the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London. As an artist-curator, her practice is characterized by an early concern for international artist-led dialogues, team constellations in curating, and new approaches to museology.
She is currently Curator at Large at KANAL-Centre Pompidou. Since 2024, she has been KANAL-Guest Professor at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, and since 2021, Global Humanities Professor in History of Art, at the University of Cambridge. Between 2010–2015, she was Director of the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt/Main, where she instituted a new trans-disciplinary lab to remediate collections within a post-ethnological paradigm, working with a wide range of artists, lawyers, and writers.Her book “The Metabolic Museum” (2020) published by Hatje Cantz, came out in Russian translation in 2021 (Garage Museum), and in Spanish in March 2023 (Caniche Editorial, Madrid). Her book “Skin in the Game. Conversations on Risk and Contention” was published in December 2023 by Hatje Cantz/KW to accompany the exhibition at KW. Since 1996, she has produced the independent artists’ and writer’s organ “Metronome”, twice officially invited to documenta, first in 1997 (dx) and then in 2007 (d12). She lives in Berlin and has joint German and British nationality.
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Dr Kimberley Moulton is a Yorta Yorta woman from Australia and a curator and writer. Kimberley is a respected international curator working across modern and contemporary art and historical collections. Leading research and curatorial practice in the field of connecting knowledge, histories and futures at the intersection of historical collections and contemporary art, her work centres regenerative re-worlding of art histories and ecological, cultural and relational Indigenous and Global Majority creative practices. She is currently Senior Curator Exhibitions at RISING, the Melbourne international arts festival and most recently held tenure as the Adjunct Curator Indigenous Art Tate London (2023-2026). She has a PhD in curatorial practice from Monash University Melbourne and in 2023 was appointed Curator Emeritus, First Peoples at Museums Victoria.
Working with artists to amplify underrepresented art histories, her practice foregrounds connecting communities to collections, through rematriation and re-spiriting collections and place beyond the colonial past. This work has positioned Moulton at the forefront of local and international curatorial and writing praxis which supports contemporary art across multidiscipline areas to re-frame a new dialogue between object, place and community. Kimberley’s research interests include Indigenous rematriation, Ancestral belongings and restitution, Indigenous space-time cosmologies and embodied knowledge in contemporary art practice.
Along with her curatorial work Kimberley is currently Deputy Chair of the Board for Australia’s leading regional art gallery, Shepparton Art Museum and Director of the board for the Adam Briggs Foundation.
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Megan Tamati-Quennell is a leading curator and writer. She has a 36-year curatorial career specialising in modern and contemporary Māori and Indigenous art. Megan is the longest serving curator in this field receiving a CNZM in 2024, for her contribution to Māori and First nations art. She is of Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Mutunga, Ngai Tahu, Kāti Māmoe and Waitaha descent. Megan has held curatorial positions at the National Art Gallery, Te Papa Tongarewa and the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and has worked as an independent curator at the Sharjah Art Foundation and in Busan, South Korea. She currently holds the position of Curator, Modern and Contemporary Māori and Indigenous Art at Te Papa. Recent career highlights include co-curating Sharjah Biennial 16, to carry, 2025 and Emily Karaka: Ka Awatea, A New Dawn, the first major survey exhibition of senior Māori painter Emily Karaka, 2024. Megan is a PhD candidate in Fine Arts, in an Indigenous-led programme at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.