The thirty-seventh issue of the Journal for art, theory and related areas begins with an editorial by Jan Zálešák and Zuzana Jakalová, who present the concept of this thematic issue, focused on curatorial research.

In her scholarly study “What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Curatorial Research? A Partial Report on the State of One Debate,” Zuzana Jakalová presents a basic definition of the issue of curatorship, and her text can also be understood as a critically annotated bibliography of curatorial research. Jana Písaříková’s essay ‘Art Doesn’t Care, Care for Art’ is a methodologically bold contribution to the discussion on how to write theory from an inherently personal perspective. In it, the author reflects on her decision to take care of the artist and curator Jiří Valoch. The aspect of care, which is sometimes mentioned as a slight cliché in etymological introductions to curatorial issues, takes centre stage in this case. Care, this time for a specific region and its human and non-human inhabitants, as well as for the planet – in contrast to the abstract logic of capital – also has an essential place in the study by the authors Martina Johnová, Anna Remešová and Karolína Žižková, “Curatorial Research as an Undisciplined and Disturbing Form of Knowledge”. The case study is devoted to the exhibition Symptoms of the Future (Ústí n. L.: Galerie Hraničář, 2024) and describes specific methods of curatorial work, which it places within a discursive framework of thinking about the exhibition as a form of research. The three original scholarly studies are complemented by a translation of the essay ‘Compensatory Poses: On Natural History, Necroaesthetics, and Caused Harm’ by Anna-Sophie Springer and Ettien Turpin. The text was written in 2019 in direct connection with the trio of exhibitions Verschwindende Vermächtnisse: Die Welt als Wald (Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest), which they prepared in collaboration with natural history museums in Berlin, Hamburg and Halle, and within the broader framework of the Reassembling the Natural project. The issue concludes with a review essay by Jan Zálešák, which focuses on a trio of publications from the Thinking About Curating series by Sternberg Press, specifically books by Terry Smith, Zdenka Badovinać, and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikunga.

Sešit pro umění, teorii a příbuzné zóny č. 37 (Journal for Art, Theory and Related Zones No. 37/2021)