Richter, D. (2012) ‘Some Thoughts on New Waves of Art Education and Mediation’, OnCurating, 13, pp. 2–4.


Richter identifies the educational turn in contemporary art as a transformation of institutional practice through discussions, archives, screenings, collaborative formats and new modes of mediation. Her important move is to resist treating these forms as merely supplementary to exhibitions; instead, they become modes of knowledge production with their own political and epistemic stakes. The contribution is theoretical as well as institutional: pedagogy becomes a field in which alliances with activist, postcolonial, feminist and anti-racist discourses can reorganise what art institutions do and whom they address. Methodologically, Richter reads mediation as a practice of redistribution, where cultural production crosses disciplinary and social boundaries and where discursive formats become part of the work itself. The bridge to wider theory lies in the politics of institutions and cognitive labour, since educational programming is understood simultaneously as a site of emancipation, conflict and potential capture. Curatorial pedagogy therefore becomes a contested infrastructure rather than a neutral public-service layer.