What does curating become when the institutions that house it become more concerned with their own survival than with making art possible?

In this lecture, Charles Esche draws on his forthcoming book Never There Yet: Possibility and the Limits of Institutional Curating (Sternberg Press, 2026) and twenty years as director of the Van Abbemuseum to propose three functions that might organise curatorial work beyond programming: rearranging, which redistributes what legacy institutions already have; instituting and constituting, which build new forms where legacy institutions cannot reach; and subsisting, which holds memory and possibility open for the times when they may be needed again. These three functions emerge from Esche’s engagement with infrastructural critique, decolonial thinking, and his concept of demodernising – a reckoning with modernity and modernism from this side of the colonial divide.

The talk will be followed by a moderated discussion with Pushkin House Director Elena Sudakova, audience Q&A, and drinks. This event is part of the Frame programme, convening curators, artists, creatives, and thinkers to examine the evolving agency of art and the responsibilities of cultural workers.

Charles Esche is a writer and curator based in Amsterdam. He is a member of the L’Internationale Association and is developing the Three Ashes Foundation on land near Bucharest, Romania. He is professor at University of the Arts London and adviser at Jan van Eyck Academie. He was director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (2004–24) and of Rooseum in Malmö (2000–2004). His curatorial projects include the Jakarta Biennale (2015), the São Paulo Bienal (2014), the RIWAQ Biennale in Palestine (2007 and 2009), the Istanbul Biennial (2005), and the Gwangju Biennale (2002). He is developing the concept of “demodernising” as a methodology for western Europeans to approach decolonial thinking.

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