Positioning A Symposium on Curatorial Learning in the Nordic-Baltic Region & Beyond

Dates & Venues 2026:

September
24th Architecture & Design Museum Helsinki
25th EMMA – Espoo Museum of Modern Art
26th Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts

October
27th Malmö Konstmuseum
28th Simian
29th PASS – Center for Practice-based Art Studies, University of Copenhagen

November
11 – 12th HDK-Valand with the Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm)
13 – 14th CuratorLab, Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm

PUBLICS expands The Centre For Curatorial Thinking activities to co-host the second in its series of four annual large scale international symposia focusing on contemporary art’s relationship to Curatorial Thinking and Publicness in, across and in relation to Finland, Nordic-Baltic region and beyond.

Positioning A Symposium on Curatorial Learning in the Nordic-Baltic Region & Beyond is the second cooperative symposia organised over four-years (Curatorial Thinking, Learning, Instituting, Collaborating) alongside a series of artist commissions and collaborations exploring Curatorial Thinking across Finland, the Nordic-Baltic region and internationally.

Positioning A Symposium on Curatorial Learning in the Nordic-Baltic Region & Beyond reflects upon how the relationship between learning, curatorial thinking, exhibitionary practices, and discourses of the curatorial have become increasingly entrenched.

Contemporary art and curatorial discourse have been centrally concerned with questions of learning. Since the advent and expansion of curatorial courses in the early nineties, on-going debates have been concerned with questions of learning and what should curators study, research, practice? In recent decades, we have seen many deliberations on different approaches to curatorial education, knowledge production, and what forms of learning will have enduring consequences for the practice of curating and its parallel discourses and histories.

Positioning gathers past and present thinking, knowledge, and critique within practices of the curatorial. In turn, creating a space for much-needed dialogue between diverse local and international contemporary art scenes and practitioners to generate new opportunities for Finnish artists and cultural workers in the Nordic-Baltic region.

Positioning asks what specific modes of curatorial thinking-as-learning are taking place across the expanding contemporary art curatorial field and enabled by such an expanding educational provision.

The series of symposia happens in collaboration with a network of museum institutions, local art organisations and actors in the Nordic Region and the curatorial network of 100+ cultural actors in the Nordic-Baltic regions actively taking part in The Centre For Curatorial Thinking, already since 2023.

The Centre For Curatorial Thinking is an evolving new networked organisational framework for collaboration, one that is de-centered across the Nordic and Baltic region involving multiple partners, curatorial agencies, art institutions and learning organisations.

PUBLICS hosts The Centre For Curatorial Thinking to instigate dialogue between local, regional, and international thinkers, with the following steering group; Pilvi Kalhama, Director & CEO, Architecture & Design Museum, Prof Mick Wilson, HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg; Prof Bassam El Baroni, Department of Art and Media, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University; Marti Manen, Director, CuratorLab, Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm; Antra Priede, Vice-rector for Academic Affairs, Art Academy of Latvia; Kati Laakso, Executive Director, Finnish Culture Institute in New York; Anne Szefer Karlsen, Professor Curatorial Practice, University of Bergen, Norway; The Estonian Centre for Contemporary Art (Kaasaegse Kunsti East Keskus) and Solvita Krese, Director of The Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art (LCCA).

Admission is free and open to the public.

More announcements about this year’s symposium are coming soon to www.positioningsymposium.com

Please save the dates and join us!

Design: Valerio di Lucente / Jono Lewarne