Contemporary Curator: Nick Waterlow

NICK WATERLOW
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Nick Waterlow
Nick Waterlow was a curator of the Sidney Biennale and a well-known and respected cultural diplomat within the Australian and global art community until his unfortunate death on 9th November 2009. After serving as the inspirational director for Sydney Biennale, beginning in1979, Waterlow was made the director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, where he mentored generations of local artists and students. He was also on the editorial board of Art & Australia, a biannual digital magazine and one of the oldest art journals in Australia. Waterlow is credited with transforming the Sydney Biennale into a global showcase for modern art that challenged Australian colonial attitudes. Before assuming directorship of three biennales of Sydney, many artists in Australia focused on New York as the global center of culture. However, Waterlow managed to connect Australian artists to European counterparts and turned the Biennale of Sydney into a grand and sophisticated narrative of world-class exhibition. This essay will examine the methodology of Waterlow using the example of the 1979 Sydney Biennale, which he directed, and particularly his appreciation for Aboriginal art.[Janet McKenzie, “Nick Waterlow Obituary,” The Guardian, November 17, 2009, sec. Art and design, /artanddesign/2009/nov/17/nick-waterlow-obituary.]
After the tragic murder of British-Australian art curator Nick Waterlow by his mentally ill son at the Sydney suburb on November 9, 2009, his partner Juliet Darling chanced upon some handwritten notes on what the curator believed characterized the art of curation. Waterlow defined a good curator as passionate, having an eye of discernment, willing to learn and unlearn, and having an ability to be uncertain. Moreover, he thought that a good curator must have a thorough understanding of works of art in order to question, inspire, and stimulate the audience, but more importantly, have the capacity to alter people’s perception of works of art. Waterlow’s notes provide critical insight into his methodology and explain why he worked hard to dismantle the stereotype of curators as old men and women who believe that their museum collections should remain flawless. He believed that in addition to fulfilling the traditional roles of archiving and preserving art collections, a curator must use the eye of discernment to include as many artists and themes as possible. Waterlow’s focus on inspiring and facilitating various artistic themes rather than competing with the artists whose works he was tasked with exhibiting is probably one of the most distinguishing features of his methodology.[F Fenner, “Document - Gale Academic OneFile,” go.gale.com, 2010, https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA460761414&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=0004301X&p=AONE&sw=w.] [Ólöf Gerður Sigfúsdóttir, “Curatorial Research as Boundary Work,” Curator: The Museum Journal 64, no. 3 (May 24, 2021): 421–38, https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.12417.]
Waterlow employed an inclusive and creative approach to...