‘An Exploratory, Irregular Tendency’: Using Digital Gardens in Curatorial Research

As we grapple with this pandemic-altered reality, institutions seek for new ways to present curatorial research online. With a focus on considered, attuned, and meaningful ways for presentation, this essay will explore the possibilities afforded by presenting curatorial research through the concept of ‘digital gardens.’ I demonstrate that digital gardens occupy an unusual space between social media feeds and fully formed publications or journal articles. With an emphasis on sampling-ideas and work-in-progress, digital gardens encourage growth whilst expressing a need to be tended. This essay examines how we might lean into the framework of a digital garden in a bid to reify the process-driven and the experimental aspects of curatorial work.