Endangered Species

Critical & Curatorial Practices in Design 2019 blurred the boundaries between curating, creating, and collecting. “The Endangered Species” was the 5th exhibition output from the subject which extends conversations and ideas about collecting, saving and preserving artworks, artefacts, objects and images.

Through the selection and display of a series of ‘off modern’ post-war case study houses, the exhibition raises questions around notions of value, ownership, heritage and authorship. But “The Endangered Species” wasn’t just about collecting, and was not only about objects and artefacts. Through archival research, it explored the impulse to preserve, archive, and protect objects, and suggested blurred lines between designer, maker and custodian of the artefact(s) as well as benign and misleading forms of classification.

“The Endangered Species” was as such a reflection on the impulse to save both the most precious and the apparently valueless, the exhibition explored over 30 authored case study houses and their unauthored counterparts as imaginary museums, personal collections, and unusual domestic assemblages. Students revealed the hidden histories of the case study houses, while arguing the case for their significance (architectural, cultural or social). The selected works were then considered for inclusion or omission from the exhibition… What’s in and what’s out?

Critical & Curatorial Practices in Design 2019 explored collecting and the collector through a series of invited speakers and the devotion with which artists, collectors, scholars, and hoarders have created sanctuaries for endangered images and artefacts. In addition our museum visits explored the function and responsibility of museums within multiple economies of desire.