Städel Museum, Schaumainkai 63, 60596 Frankfurt am Main
Opening hours: Tue–Sun, 10am–6pm; Thu, 10am–9pm
Opening: Tuesday, July 15, 2025, 7pm–10pm
Today
Ongoing
Summer Semester 2025
Information, 22 April – 25 July 2025
Upcoming
Overture – Graduate Exhibition
Exhibition, 15 July – 10 August 2025, 19:00
Ana Janevski: Looping, Relaying and Echoing. Three Curatorial Strategies
Lecture, 16 July 2025, 19:00
Tanya Lukin Linklater: _structural_flex_
Lecture, 8 July 2025, 19:00
Florence Jung: Doing nothing?
Lecture, 24 June 2025, 19:00
Rabih Mroué: Shot/Counter Shot. Rethinking the Reverse
Lecture, 17 June 2025, 19:00
Adir Jan & Emrah Gökmen: On the Shores of the Munzur, on the Shores of the Murat
Concert, 12 June 2025, 20:00
Miloš Trakilović: Love Songs & War Machines
Lecture, 10 June 2025, 19:00
Anna Roberta Goetz: 36. Bienal de São Paulo. Not All Travellers Walk Roads / Of Humanity as Practice
Lecture, 3 June 2025, 19:00
Jimmy Robert
Lecture, 27 May 2025, 19:00
Klein: No Degree, No Budget, No Problem
Lecture (20.5.) Concert (21.5.), 20 – 21 May 2025
Julian Irlinger: Reanimation and Reconstruction
Lecture, 13 May 2025, 19:00
İmran Ayata & Bülent Kullukçu: Songs of Gastarbeiter
Music Lecture, 8 May 2025, 19:00
Enzo Camacho & Ami Lien: Langit Lupa (Heaven Earth)
Screening (5.5.) Lecture (6.5.), 5 – 6 May 2025, 19:00
Helen Marten: Animal Hours
Lecture, 29 April 2025, 19:00
Application: Master of Arts Program in CURATORIAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES
Application, 10 April – 31 May 2025
Semester Break Spring 2025
Information, 14 February – 21 April 2025
Water Cooler Talks 2025
Event, 8 – 9 February 2025
Rundgang 2025
Exhibition, 7 – 9 February 2025, 10:00–20:00
Trisha Donnelly
Lecture, 30 January 2025, 19:00
Kerstin Brätsch: Parasite Painting
Lecture, 28 January 2025, 19:00
Emma Enderby: Curating in and out of Place
Lecture, 14 January 2025, 19:00
David Teh: Auteur-Bureaucrat? The Curatorial Function in Asia

If contemporary art is a ‘global’ phenomenon, curators have been key protagonists in its globalisation and its emerging history. Yet the terms ‘curatorial’ and ‘contemporary’ are far from universal and still too rarely scrutinized. What defines the curatorial function and how does that differ from one time or place to another? In this lecture, David Teh will challenge some common assumptions about the role, assumptions which do not match the reality of curatorial practice in Asia. He will sketch a discontinuous history of the curatorial function, characterised by ambivalent relations to state power and bureaucracy, to art history, and to modernity itself. Such considerations may have been deferred while Asian curators sought an equal footing with the globetrotting taste-makers of the international art system. But as that system’s centre of gravity shifts towards Asia, they should not be put off any longer.
David Teh is a writer, curator and Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore. His research spans art history, critical and cultural theory with an emphasis on Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art. His curatorial projects include Unreal Asia (55. Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, 2009); Video Vortex #7 (Yogyakarta, 2011); TRANSMISSION (Jim Thompson Art Center, Bangkok, 2014); Misfits: Pages from a Loose-leaf Modernity (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2017) and Returns (12th Gwangju Biennale, 2018). He is currently co-curating the 17th Istanbul Biennial (with Ute Meta Bauer and Amar Kanwar). Teh's writings have appeared in Third Text, Afterall, ARTMargins, Theory Culture & Society and Artforum. His book Thai Art: Currencies of the Contemporary was published in 2017 by MIT Press and he was co-editor (with David Morris) of Artist-to-Artist: Independent Art Festivals in Chiang Mai 1992-98 (2018) for Afterall's Exhibition Histories series.
The lecture will be held in English language.