Beyond Inclusivity: Toward Ethical Accountability in Global Curating

Author: Dawit Algerson

The curatorial field has entered a phase of moral fatigue. After more than a decade of exhibitions promising diversity and representation, the language of ethics risks becoming aestheticised and absorbed into the institutional grammar of global art. “Inclusion” has become both a virtue signal and a containment strategy, an invitation that rarely transforms the structures it inhabits. This essay positions ethical accountability as the necessary next step in the evolution of curatorial ethics.Accountability demands more than visibility; it requires continuity, care, and critical self-implication. Curating today must not only address who is visible but also interrogate how, where, and to whom responsibility is sustained after visibility has been granted. The shift from inclusion to accountability marks a movement from symbolic representation to structural and relational ethics.

Drawing on theorists such as Irit Rogoff and Beatrice von Bismarck, this paper adopts the concept of the curatorial as a critical mode of thought, an ongoing condition rather than an isolated event. As Rogoff (2012) observes, the curatorial does not end with display but continues as a sustained relationship with context and consequence. Similarly, Nora Sternfeld and Luisa Ziaja (2012) describe post-representational curating as a process of collaborative knowledge production, positioning curating as a mode of shared epistemology rather than static exhibition-making. Together, these frameworks redefine the curator as a custodian of relational accountability.

Daniela Agostinho’s (2024) notion of curating other-archives adds a reparative dimension to this discourse. Her work frames curating as an act of witnessing and care, not to fill historical voids but to hold space for their persistence. This resonates with Temi Odumosu’s (2019) What Lies Unspoken (Statens Museum for Kunst, 2017), where listening, witnessing, and countervisuality become ethical acts within the colonial museum. Both scholars argue that accountability lies not in inclusion but in sustained responsiveness to the silences and tensions that inclusion often masks.

At an institutional level, Addis Fine Art, a dual-location gallery operating between Addis Ababa and London, illustrates these tensions. Its transnational model embodies the complexities of representing local artistic voices within global systems of validation. Rather than viewing this as a simple success story of African inclusion, this essay reads it as a site of negotiation where accountability is enacted across unequal geographies of authorship and audience. By drawing parallels to Agostinho’s Reparative Encounters (2025) network, which connects artists and curators across Ghana, Greenland, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, Addis Fine Art is situated within a broader constellation of Global South institutions striving to practice ethical responsibility within transnational frameworks.

Similarly, Daniel Cid’s (2023) Following the Fish (Venice Architecture Biennale, Institut Ramon Llull Pavilion) provides a productive parallel. His emphasis on decarbonisation and shared futures in cultural design mirrors the curatorial imperative to decarbonise representational systems and dismantle extractive models of visibility that persist under the guise of diversity. Ethical accountability, in this sense, is both ecological and institutional, a practice of care that rebalances rather than replaces. Readers can refer to the exhibition documentation of Following the Fish (Venice Biennale, 2023) for visual context.

Ethical accountability in curating requires a shift from representation to responsibility. The curatorial field increasingly recognises that inclusion and visibility, while necessary, do not in themselves transform the structures that determine who is seen and how meaning is produced. As von Bismarck, Rogoff, and Sternfeld argue, curating is not a neutral act but a form of knowledge production that both reflects and shapes social hierarchies. The question is not only who is represented, but through which systems of power representation becomes possible.

Daniela Agostinho’s concept of curating as witnessing and care provides an ethical foundation for this discussion. In her work on other-archives and the afterlives of images, Agostinho (2024) argues that curatorial practice carries a responsibility toward both the living and the dead. This form of ethical witnessing demands attentiveness to how historical materials are reactivated within exhibitions and how they can reproduce or repair harm. Curating thus becomes an act of accountability, where care functions as a political method rather than a symbolic gesture.

Building on this, Sternfeld and Ziaja (2012) define post-representational curating as an approach that moves beyond display and authority toward participation and negotiation. This aligns with Rogoff’s (2008) educational turn, which reframes curating as a pedagogical process of co-learning and critical reflection. Together, these perspectives position curating as a relational method of inquiry rather than a platform of presentation.

These frameworks reveal the need to transform institutions rather than reform their surfaces. Exhibitions such as What Lies Unspoken (SMK, 2017) and Kirchner and Nolde: Expressionism. Colonialism (SMK, 2021) exemplify this shift. As Hicks (2020) notes, institutional reflexivity alone is insufficient when material hierarchies of ownership remain unchanged; accountability requires restitution, shared authorship, and long-term collaboration. Readers can consult SMK’s public archives for images and documentation of these exhibitions.

At the global level, Daniel Cid’s Following the Fish (Venice Architecture Biennale, 2023) links ecological responsibility with postcolonial ethics. By situating architecture and art within planetary systems, the project demonstrates how curating can bridge local knowledge and global networks. Ethical accountability, therefore, becomes both structural and environmental, a method of care extending across scales of visibility.

In Eastern Europe, accountability takes on additional dimensions. Tlostanova, Annus, Oleksiyenko, and Tavadze (2024) reveal how cultural institutions remain shaped by imperial epistemologies inherited from both Soviet and Western paradigms. Their text Decolonizing Ukrainian Art History (2024) calls for dismantling dual dependencies through deimperialised frameworks of authorship. Tlostanova’s (2012) notion of decolonial aesthesis reframes aesthetics as epistemic resistance rather than imitation.

In Moldova, these ideas manifest through overlapping forms of marginality, including the legacy of Soviet domination, Romanian proximity, and Western expectation. Annus (2018) terms this condition “internal colonialism,” where empire persists in institutional and psychological forms. Fanon’s (1961) insights into decolonization as a reconstitution of selfhood remain vital here, suggesting that curatorial work must address both structural and affective residues of empire. Exhibitions such as ECOURI (National Museum of Fine Arts, Chișinău, 2025) and Grădina Urzica / Nettle Garden (Danish Cultural Institute, 2025) demonstrate how curating can operate as an act of repair, integrating ecology, memory, and decolonial awareness. Readers can refer to institutional websites and press archives for further visual and contextual reference to these exhibitions.

Across these contexts, ethical accountability thus emerges as a sustained negotiation between care, reflexivity, and structural transformation. From Agostinho’s witnessing to Sternfeld’s processual ethics, from Rogoff’s pedagogical critique to Tlostanova’s decolonial aesthetics and Fanon’s humanist reconstruction, a framework for curatorial ethics takes shape, one that privileges responsibility over representation and relation over visibility. Ultimately, curating ethically means transforming visibility into commitment and critique into care.

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

References

Agostinho, D. (2024). Curating Other-Archives: Witnessing, Care and Image Afterlives. In Inward Outward: Witnessing/Care & the Archive. Inward Outward Symposium Publication.

Annus, E. (2018). Soviet Postcolonial Studies: A View from the Western Borderlands. Routledge.

Bismarck, B. von, & Rogoff, I. (2012). “Curating/Curatorial.” In B. von Bismarck (Ed.), Cultures of the Curatorial (pp. 31–38). Sternberg Press.

Cid, D. (2023). Following the Fish. Venice Architecture Biennale Catalogue, Institut Ramon Llull.

Fanon, F. (1961). The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press.

Hicks, D. (2020). The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Pluto Press.

Odumosu, T. (2019). What Lies Unspoken: Sounding the Colonial Archive. Statens Museum for Kunst.

Rogoff, I. (2008). “Turning.” e-flux journal, Issue 0.

Sternfeld, N., & Ziaja, L. (2012). “What Comes After the Show? On Post-Representational Curating.” On Curating, 14(12), 21–24.

Tlostanova, M. (2012). Decolonial Aesthesis and the Challenges of Post-Soviet Imaginaries. Duke University Press.

Tlostanova, M., Annus, E., Oleksiyenko, A., & Tavadze, G. (2024). Decolonizing Ukrainian Art History. Nationalities Papers, 52(3), 451–467. Cambridge University Press.