Curating the Exhibition
STANDARD: Inclusively incorporate the needs of creatives, audiences, venues, and communities from the inception of the project.
Minimum Practice
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (DDA) establishes minimum legal standards to prevent discrimination and remove barriers to provide equitable access. The DDA makes it unlawful to discriminate against people with disabilities and promotes equal rights. Compliance with the DDA, alongside compliance with the principles embedded in the United Nations Declaration on the rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) [see Standard 1], are essential to the curation of touring exhibitions.
Best Practice
Best practice curation of a touring exhibition embeds consultation, audience experience, and venue capacity into curatorial decision-making to create proactive frameworks for inclusion and participation. The Australian Disability Strategy 2021–2031 goes beyond the DDA’S minimal legal requirements to provide a structure that is shaped by lived experience and emphasises universal design principles, co-design, user consultation, and systematic change. Creative Australia’s Protocols for using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts are the primary reference for the sector and should be read by anyone working with First Nations content in a touring context.
The capacity of the tour venues to enact curatorial vision is a primary concern
Guidance
When curating an exhibition to travel to multiple locations a focus on transportability, durability, sustainability, and adaptability become important. Ensuring that the content of your exhibition is engaging for audiences, as well as authentically represented with care for the creatives, venues, and community, are key to a successful tour.
Is it tourable?
This is a question that will link back to your capacity in Standard 2, as almost anything is tourable if you have the resources. Consider how a work will endure repeated installation and deinstallation, travel in the available crating, or survive the varying environmental conditions of venues.
Financial and logistical planning is particularly important for exhibitions that rely on the ongoing presence of artists, performers, or specialist installers. Costs and arrangements will not only include fees, but also travel, accommodation, per diems, break-out spaces, supplies, and facilitating consultation. These practical considerations may influence your creative vision. Having versions of your exhibition that are flexible in nature and can be scaled to suit the capacities of venues can be beneficial, as can utilising display copies, facsimiles, recordings, and reproductions of works, particularly for elements that have high conservation, insurance, or display requirements.
Host venue relevance
Curatorial rationales often have links to places, people, collections, or histories, which can make their relevance dependent on a context or community. While an exhibition may have significant relevance to one organisation or location, this same relevance may not apply to other places. Considering the state-wide, national, or international relevance of your project when curating a touring exhibition is important.
Consultation
All touring projects should have meaningful consultation integrated into the curatorial process from the beginning. What consultation looks like will vary from project to project, but the principle is consistent in that the communities represented in the content of your exhibition should have genuine input into what the exhibition looks like and where it travels, particularly when content will be touring across multiple places over an extended period.
This applies to First Nations peoples, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, people who identify as gender diverse, people with disability and d/Deaf people, and others whose lives and identities are part of the exhibition’s subject matter. Questions about inclusion, intent, and integrity tend to become more visible over the course of a tour than in a single presentation. Authentic consultation that is early, sustained, and properly resourced should be prioritised. All consultation must be remunerated at industry-standard rates. Consultation without fair payment is extraction. Refer to the Pre-Tour Engagement section for practical approaches to connecting with Host Venues.
First Nations Country
Every exhibition in this country is on First Nations land. Considering what content is appropriate and meaningful to present, and on whose Country, should inform the curatorial process from the outset.
If your exhibition contains First Nations cultural objects, images, stories, language, or ideas, ICIP considerations must be investigated. Permissions, attribution, and any usage restrictions should be established before the exhibition is finalised. If you are unsure whether your content raises ICIP considerations, the Creative Australia Protocols are the starting point, and specialist First Nations advice should be sought.
Touring an exhibition moves content across different First Nations Country areas. What appropriate engagement looks like will differ between places and communities and there is no single approach that applies everywhere. Take the time to understand the Country you are touring across, work with host venues to identify relevant local First Nations peoples and organisations, and approach each iteration of the tour with the same care as the first. Engage with existing First Nations-led resources and publications wherever possible and treat First Nations people as partners and authorities.
Audience Experience
Access should be considered from the inception of a touring project to ensure accessible and inclusive features are effectively integrated across venues with varying resources and architectural conditions. Touring organisers need to identify access services and facilities available at each host venue (e.g. assistive hearing systems, quiet or low-sensory spaces, accessible amenities) to inform planning and ensure consistent access provision across the tour. This requires planning, funding, and staff capacity from the outset.
Items such as the height of exhibition furniture, circulation space around works, the typography of didactic materials, providing content in multiple accessible formats (e.g., audio guides, audio description, braille and raised text, Easy English and large print hard copies, accessible digital documents, captioned and Auslan- interpreted videos, transcripts) need to be designed to meet accessibility requirements and standards.
Organisers should assess their level of expertise in embedding accessible programming (e.g. Auslan interpretation, audio description, tactile elements and sensory-friendly initiatives and tours) into the exhibition design and determine whether access is integrated from the outset or introduced as additional components.
Host venues will have varying levels of experience delivering accessible programming and may require guidance and support. Planning should account for this by ensuring appropriate resourcing, clear delivery requirements, and capacity-building where needed to support consistent and high-quality access outcomes.
Education and public programming resources and activities should also be considered from the inception of a touring project, to ensure deeper community engagement, broaden audience reach, and increase the cultural impact of the exhibition.
Arts and Disability Organisations
Arts and disability organisations are important places to seek advice, find resources, and develop collaborative approaches. The Arts and Disability Network Australia (ADNA) combines the knowledge of seven arts and disability organisations from across the country and together they are a leading initiative to improve access and inclusion across creative industries and workplaces, as part of the Australian Government’s Equity: the Arts and
Disability Associated Plan. These organisations include:
- SA: Access2Arts
- NSW: Accessible Arts
- WA: DADAA
- NT: Incite Arts
- NT: Arts Access Darwin
- QLD: Access Arts
- VIC: Arts Access Victoria
Standards In Action
M&G NSW – Restaging HOSSEI | ESSSENSSSE
[IN DEVELOPMENT] Museums & Galleries of NSW (M&G NSW) speak on the unique considerations of touring HOSSEI | ESSSENSSSE and the impacting results of this complex format.
M&G QLD – Accessibility Strategies in Museums & Galleries Queensland’s Touring Exhibitions [TO BE DESIGNED] A resource by Museums & Galleries QLD (M&G QLD) looking at the accessibility inclusions and strategies used across various touring exhibitions.
Ready To Use Support
Accessible Arts – Exhibition Environments Checklist
A checklist to help improve the practices and environments created within exhibition-making to encourage inclusive curatorial practice.
NETS Australia – Curatorial Prompts
This resource features sets of prompts to challenge curators and creatives to breakdown their thematic concepts and creative strategies, as well as adapt the accessibility, inclusion, and First Nations considerations of their exhibitions for a touring context.
Useful Resources & Further Reading
NETS Victoria & PGAV – Curating Safe Practices— Curatorial Intensive
NETS Victoria collaborated with Public Galleries Association of Victoria (PGAV) to present a free series of one- hour webinars responding to the themes of: managing curatorial risk; First Nations cultural safety; online engagement; and best practice for working inclusively with artists with disability. Watch them online.
M&G NSW – Introduction to Access
Written by Museums & Galleries of NSW (M&G NSW), this simple resource looks at different types of access and provides both considerations and suggestions for creating a more inclusive environment.
The Disability Discrimination Act 1992
Australian law prohibiting disability discrimination, requiring equal access, reasonable adjustments, and protection across employment, education, services, housing, and public life.
Australian Disability Strategy 2021–2031
Australia’s national framework improving outcomes for people with disability through policy, safety, economic participation, and accountability across governments and communities.
Australian Government – Equity: the Arts and Disability Associated Plan
The Australian Government’s four-year plan advancing equity for artists, arts workers, and audiences with disability through systemic change, access, representation, and accountability. This Plan will help deliver outcomes under Australia’s Disability Strategy.
The Relationship is the Project
The Relationship is the Project: A guide to working with communities, edited by Jade Lille and Kate Larsen, with Cara Kirkwood and Jax Brown, New South Publishing, 2024. This book considers the practicalities and ethics of engaging with community-based artistic practice.
Countess Report – Clear Expectations
Clear Expectations: Guidelines for Institutions, Galleries and Curators Working with Trans, Non-Binary and Gender Diverse Artists was commissioned by Countess Report and supported by NAVA. The guide was compiled by artists Spence Messih and Archie Barry. This resource provides an overview of best practice for art spaces, ranging from Artist Run Initiatives to larger organisations, when working with trans, non-binary, and gender diverse creatives.
Curatorial Toolkit, a Practical Guide for Curators
This toolkit is designed primarily for emerging curators by Canadian organisation 2010 Legacies Now. Although written mainly for independent curators, a lot of this information is relevant for individuals working within an organisation. The toolkit assumes the curator will be working primarily in the non-profit sector with public art galleries, museums and/or artist-run centres in Canada, although the information can also be relevant for contracts within the private sector and with institutions outside of Canada.