Rethinking “Live”: Creative Practice of Art Exhibitions in the Post-Pandemic

Abstract

Exhibiting is a method of sociological practice that has been widely concerned and discussed following the COVID-19 pandemic. The reason for this is that exhibitions have the potential to create “live” public encounters. Creative dialogue and collaboration can provide people with great psychological support, particularly during restricted movement. At the same time, exhibitions are about caring and gently relieving anxious minds, and art has great cultural resilience in times of crisis. From a practical perspective, museum or gallery practitioner all over the world create discourse spaces through online platforms. In addition, new curation methods based on public participation and community cooperation models have increased in the three years since the coronavirus outbreak. Therefore, this paper explores how art museums can innovate after suffering abnormal losses and discusses how art exhibitions in the post-pandemic era can establish “live” public encounters. From the specific perspectives of the innovation of online platforms and the construction of daily space, how exhibitions reflexively construct “live” in curating practice regarding creative cooperation, publicness, and other related issues will be analyzed. The author thinks that combining the flexibility an online platform provides and the sensitivity of physical space to create a creatively engaging exhibition in a limited community can help the public establish “cultural resilience” for navigating through times of uncertainty and rapid change.