This a/r/tographic dissertation offers opportunities to interrogate curator identity and curator ways of being in both public and private spaces. Instead of an authoritative or prescriptive look at the curatorial, this dissertation as catalogue allows for uncertainty, for messiness, for vulnerable spaces where readers are invited into an exhibition of disorderly living. Stitched throughout the study are stories of mothering and the difficulties that accompanied the extremely early birth of my daughter. Becoming a mother provoked my curating in unexpected ways and allowed me to reconsider the reasons I collect, display, and perform as a curator. It was through the actual curating of familial material artifacts in the exhibition Dress Stories, I was able to map the journey of my curatorial turns. My engagement with clothing in the inquiry was informed by the work of Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, where dress as a methodology allows for spaces to consider autobiography, identity, and practice. It was not until the exhibition was over, I was able to discover new ways to thread caring, collecting, and cataloging ourselves as curators, artists, researchers, teachers, and mothers. It prompts curators and teachers to consider possibilities for failure, releasing excess, and uncaring as a way to care for self, objects, and others.
