THE drive for profit touches many areas of art, and professional curating is one of them. Quite a few curators are unqualified, uneducated in art and history and all too willing to write paid glowing reviews. Wang Jie reports.

It takes a good curator to put a good exhibition together and over the years professional curators and critics have "discovered" great artists such as the Big Four of Chinese contemporary art.

Brilliant exhibitions reflect curators' creative ideas.

Museum curators arrange exhibitions and develop themes. Independent curators encourage artists to release their energy.

They are indispensable figures in the art world, knowledgeable in the arts and criticism, art history, museums, collections, acquisitions, restorations and many other fields.

But though the word "curator" is more familiar to museum-goers today, the curating profession itself is becoming divorced from art and more associated with business today, according to Hou Hanru, a noted Chinese curator and critic who lives in the United States.

"A curator should be an art critic, otherwise he is nothing," says Hou, one of China's pioneering curators who rose to international fame almost a decade ago.

"If a curator is neither an art critic nor an art historian, then he is merely working staff, not unlike the security guard at a museum," he explains.

These days quite a few Chinese curators are nonprofessionals.

"I once visited an exhibition and got an album," says a local artist in his 40s, identifying himself only as Wang. "To my surprise, the curator's name written in the album is its sponsor, an entrepreneur. It seems that who pay for the show get this (curator's) title. How ridiculous," he says.

Sponsors are not the only ones bestowed with the title curator. Sometimes the museum director, an administrator, is also titled curator. Some curators of state museums are appointed directly by officials.

"I should make this clear: I am not saying that all museum directors are non-professionals. But the responsibilities of a museum director lie in the operation of a museum; this is an administrative position rather than an academic one," Wang says.

Museum directors status

But here in China, some artists, especially those not so well known, prefer to invite the museum director (a respected title) to be the curator for their exposition, through social connections, because it (museum director as curator) sounds like a plus to confirm the status of the artist.

The level of an exhibition's curator may determine the status of the exhibiting artist in the art community.

"Some artists want to pay me a large sum of money to write an article for them, but I only write for artists whose work I believe to be great," says curator Hou. "After all, I am not writing for advertisement. For me, this is my integrity, or at least the integrity of a curator."

Back in the early 1980s, curators were more closely identified with art, rather than with profits or personal relationships.

Without the efforts and promotion by curators, Chinese contemporary art would not have moved from the underground to the international art stage - or at least, not so quickly.

Li Xianting, independent art critic and curator, is one of the most famous during the period. Sometimes known as the "Godfather" in contemporary art, he spotted Fang Lijun, Zhang Xiaogang, Wang Guangyi and Yue Minjun - later called the F4 (First or Fab 4). But at the time in the 1980s, they were young artists toiling and ignored in the Beijing suburbs.

Li wrote a series of articles about their works, art backgrounds, art initiatives and their own comments. Western media read these articles and subsequently focused on the young artists.

But since 2005, the characteristics of the first generation of Chinese curators, such as Zhang Qin and Lu Peng, have altered.

Some opened their own galleries, some became art professor, some became museum director, since they needed to earn a livelihood. Otherwise, it would be impossible to make a living on articles and curating.

Money vs art

In the West there is a mechanism to support and develop curators, but China lacks the same foundation and official financial support for curators.

"This affects living conditions for curators and funding to run an exhibition for an individual curator in China," says Gu Zhenqing, a famous individual curator, guest professor at two art academies and the chief editor of a Chinese art magazine.

Thus the influence of Chinese curators - admittedly never extraordinary - has become diluted. "The situation (declining influence of curators) comes both from outside and inside the art world," according to Gu.

"The disturbance from the commercial market and the direct appointment of curator at some official art museums together weaken the power of an individual curator in the country," Gu tells Shanghai Daily.

He is probably the most prolific curator in China; in the past 15 years he curated nearly 50 exhibitions both in China and overseas.

In his eyes, a good individual curator is an all-rounder in China: he can attract money for an exhibition; he has good academic background, experience in space design, communication and promotion skills.

"I suggest individual curators open their own curators' firm, because an individual curator requires a professional back up team," Gu says. "Otherwise a curator's job would become commercialized. Finally, an individual curator might degrade himself working under an artist."

Curator vs artist

In fact, sometimes the relationship between a curator and an artist is both cooperative and combative.

Zhan Wang, one of China's top sculptors, says, "As an artist, I am familiar with different types of curators. I am never picky about where the curator is from - gallery, museum or individual curator. I am only keen on whether the curator can do a good job."

A well-qualified curator who assembles an exhibition also usually arrives at a theme for the exhibition.

"I am not a sparring partner, but a curator. I do push an artist to release his energy and make a new burst in my exhibition," Gu says.

"Frankly, I don't agree with any curators' suggestions on my work. Yet sometimes the exhibition is like a mirror reflecting something real. The curator might in fact have a clearer vision," sculptor Zhan says.

Maintaining the balance between the curator and artist is a skill.

"Certainly the freedom of an artist is the priority. The theme is just a conceptual framework around which the artist can improvise," curator Hou says. "In America, curators take an intellectual attitude toward art. But here in China, I seldom see intellectual curators. It is more like a routine job, quickly finished. Today I rarely see the belief in art among Chinese curators."

In Hou's eyes, belief in art is something personal and unique, another way to look at the world.

"From the beginning, Chinese individual curators have been exploring under certain (historical) circumstances and conditions," curator Gu says. "It's not a title that can simply be handed to another person."

Mediocre curators put on mediocre "soulless" exhibitions, Gu says. "A quality curator is like one active fish that can active the whole pond."