ASSESSMENT

Why assess an exhibition?

The exhibition provides an assessment platform for both SL and HL students to showcase the final product of their art-making processes. It allows for the assessment of the observable qualities of technical resolution, the successful communication of ideas and the synthesis of form and function. It also provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate their discernment in determining the strongest works for the exhibition and how to best arrange these works to their best advantage and to make connections for the audience between works. Additionally, HL students need to articulate how they have considered possible relationships between the artworks exhibited and the viewer.

Core syllabus areas related to the task

The following core syllabus areas are addressed in the exhibition assessment task.

Visual arts in context

• Informed by their responses to work and exhibitions they have seen and experienced, students formulate personal intentions for creating and displaying their own artworks.

Visual arts methods

• Evaluating how their ongoing work communicates meaning and purpose
• Producing and selecting a body of artwork through a process of reflection and evaluation, showing a synthesis of skill, media and concept
• Considering the nature of “exhibition” and thinking about the process of selection

Communicating visual arts

• Selecting and presenting resolved works for exhibition
• Explaining the ways in which the works are connected
• Discussing how artistic judgments impact the overall presentation
• Considering and explaining the impact of their work on different audiences (HL only)

Possible approaches to creating an exhibition

IB World Schools represent a diverse range of socio-economic circumstances and physical resources. A number of schools have semi-professional gallery spaces on campus, other schools make-do with school halls, gymnasiums or even classrooms to display student work. A small number of schools have even hired professional gallery or exhibition spaces to exhibit student work. It is important to recognize that this component of the course is not intended to assess the quality of the space provided for students in which to exhibit their work. Rather, students are assessed on:

• the technical competence displayed in the work
• the appropriate use of materials, techniques and processes used in the work
• the resolution of the works and the degree to which they communicate the stated intentions
• a coherency in the work selected
• for HL students, the consideration for the overall experience of the viewer through the way the work is arranged and presented within the available space.

It is appropriate, and most likely a necessity, for the teacher to be responsible for proportioning the available exhibition space among the students. The division of space should be equitable, but needs to also take into account such things as the size and scope of individual student work, the need for wall versus the need for floor (or plinth) space or access to power outlets. Exhibition spaces need not be self-contained. Satellite exhibitions might be necessary for students who have produced site-specific work, such as a mural elsewhere on the school campus.

However, once students have been assigned the space in which they will exhibit their work, it is crucial that they are given the responsibility for determining how they will arrange and display their work. This is an important aspect of the task.

Possible structure

There are two distinct stages to the exhibition task. Firstly, there is the physical exhibition, where you need to select your best works and arrange them so that they present a coherent exhibition. Secondly, you need to document your exhibition electronically to facilitate the process of moderation by which a moderator may view your exhibition to ensure that the way that it has been marked by your school is consistent with the standard set by the IB.

Your teacher will allocate a space for you to set up your exhibition. You will need to plan and decide how to best display your work so that it is shown to its best advantage and best communicates your intent to the audience. You need to consider which works need to be displayed in close proximity and which works need to be further apart. Do any of the works help convey your intentions better when they are displayed together?

Further advice for students

• When choosing work for the exhibition, select your strongest work that best reflects your achievement against the marking criteria. Your teacher is looking for consistency in the quality of work, so including a weak work may be detrimental to your overall mark.
• Once you have selected your body of work, consider your curatorial approach. Does your artwork reflect a strong material practice (that is, focused on visual qualities, exploring the properties of different media and material and the refinement of technical skills) or a strong conceptual practice (that is, communicating ideas, concepts or themes through the use of imagery)? Adopt a curatorial approach that best presents your work as a coherent body of work.
• Document your work photographically before you display it, making use of the best lighting available to you.
• Once the exhibition is set up and you are satisfied with it, take a number of photographs of the exhibition. Choose the two shots that best reflect the work in the context of the exhibition.
• When preparing the documentation of the exhibition for the purpose of moderation, organize the works in the order that you would prefer the audience to view them, based on your curatorial rationale.

Writing a curatorial rationale

(see structure image at the very bottom of this page)

A well-written curatorial statement is your chance to guide the way the audience perceives your exhibition. It represents an opportunity to communicate directly with viewers, and help them recognize your intent and purpose in your body of work, understand your point of view, and generate intrigue and curiosity about the body of work they are about to experience.

When writing the curatorial statement, it is good to keep some general guidelines in mind. The statement has a word limit. For SL students, it is 400 words. For HL students, it is 700 words. If you exceed this, parts of your statement will not be considered in your assessment.

It can be helpful to follow a basic structure:

Further advice

• If there is a particular work that was especially instrumental in the way you perceived your exhibition, it might be interesting to describe that work in more depth to draw the audience into your thought process.
• It is important to remember that you have an opportunity to write a short statement to accompany each artwork in the exhibition, so do not use up your word limit describing each work. Rather, identify thematic and/or stylistic connections between works.
• Consider the style of the statement. There are two audiences for your exhibition: your school community and the IB assessment system, which will include your teacher and IB moderators. You want to avoid using the kind of art-world jargon that might alienate a general audience but still be specific enough when articulating your vision to engage the teacher and moderator. If there is a specific art term that is central to the main idea of your exhibition, be sure to define it within your statement.
• Your statement should be written in an informative and persuasive tone, but because you are writing about your own work, personal pronouns (I, my and so on) are appropriate.
• Be realistic, frank and honest about your work. Statements that do not reflect the work that is presented cannot score highly against the marking criteria.
• Less is more. While the word limits for SL ad HL are 400 and 700 words respectively, most curatorial statements written for exhibitions in galleries are between 300 and 500 words.

Writing exhibition text

For each artwork you submit, it should be supported by exhibition text that outlines the title, medium and size of the artwork. The exhibition text should also include a brief outline of the original intentions of the work (500 characters maximum—including spaces—per artwork). This can be presented in the following way.