What was your daily life like before you identified as a curator? Did your initial environment influence your perspective on art? Was there a particular experience that inspired you to pursue this path?

Lara Goodband (LG): I grew-up in Liverpool and was reviewing the art exhibitions at Tate Liverpool for my local paper The Crosby Herald when that gallery first opened. I feel lucky to have grown-up in a city that celebrates and supports visual art. National Museums Liverpool are incredible with world-class collections so visiting the Walker Art Gallery since I was a toddler has been hugely influential.
While I was studying for my BA in English Lit & History of Art at York Uni, I invigilated for the university gallery and made a student radio programme where I interviewed art curators so the natural progression was to do a internship at York Art Gallery while doing a fine art diploma.
Following that, my first position was as Exhibitions Curator at York Art Gallery after my MA in History of Art from Manchester University.

© Nancy Holt, Trail Markers, 1969, printed 2012 (Dartmoor, RAMM, Exeter, 2024) © Holt Smithson Foundation, Licensed by Artists Rights Society, New York

© Alex Hartley, The Summoning Stones, (Dartmoor 2024)

Can you share details about your educational background? How has it shaped your curatorial journey? Were there any mentors or figures who significantly influenced your artistic vision?

LG: I walked to local schools where I grew-up in north Liverpool. The small primary was Church of England (they’re either CofE or Catholic in Liverpool) and my secondary school was a large comprehensive school. I did have the same primary school teacher for 3 years who was art trained and took every opportunity to have painting afternoons. Great fun! Then when I was doing my A-levels at the small sixth form attached to the comp. I had a really wonderful art teacher who let me study art as a fourth A level (in the break times) and he gave up all his free time to present art history slide shows – I ended up getting the highest grade in Sefton Education authority in the art history project so he clearly inspired me. Every Wednesday afternoon I would go into the city and used Liverpool central library’s art library to study or visited the Walker Art Gallery. I really wish that as a young curator I’d had a female mentor because I did find it a struggle in my first job working with a posh man who didn’t come into work until lunchtime. I found myself doing very, very long hours and got quite burnt out there. More recently, Teresa Gleadowe at CAST in Cornwall has been a brilliant mentor and having the opportunity to spend a week on the Cornwall Workshop in 2022 with artist Elizabeth Price was hugely influential.

© Dartmoor - A Radical Landscape, RAMM 2024. Photo credit Simon Tutty

© Dartmoor - A Radical Landscape, RAMM 2024. Photo credit Simon Tutty

© Dartmoor - A Radical Landscape, RAMM 2024. Photo credit Simon Tutty

What themes or urgencies resonate with you in your curatorial practice? What aspects of art capture your attention?

LG: I’ve been curating exhibitions around the interconnected climate and ecological emergencies for quite a while now. I was Co-Artistic Director of the Cultural Olympiad project Sea Swim from 2011 to 2017, and Co-Curator of the Hull City of Culture exhibition Offshore: Artists Explore the Sea in 2017. More recently, for RAMM, I co-curated Earth Spells: Witches of the Anthropocene. In the past few years, it’s been exciting to see more major shows devoted to work by Black women artists. I’ve particularly enjoyed working with the artists Michelle Williams Gamaker on her RAMM commission The Silver Wave and Joy Gregory’s The Sweetest Thing for RAMM’s In Plain Sight: Transatlantic slavery and Devon exhibition. I’ve just started working with Charmaine Watkiss who has been commissioned to create a new for display at RAMM in Spring 2025.

© Robert Darch, Roos Tor from The Ten Tors series, 2018, (Dartmoor, RAMM, Exeter, 2024), © Robert Darch

What have been some key challenges or milestones in your curatorial career?

LG: I was freelance in Yorkshire for 9 years from 2008 which gave me the opportunity to work with so many different types of organisations in different buildings and locations. I absolutely loved working in Bradford and Keighley with the teams at Bradford Museums and Galleries who regularly asked me to curate and direct projects across their venues. I’m thrilled the city will be City of Culture next year – it’s going to be brilliant. And Cartwright Hall Art Gallery is such a fantastic venue for the Turner prize. I’ve such great memories of curating shows with the team there, especially showing Hockney’s ‘Bigger Trees Near Warter’. I was incredibly busy with Hull City of Culture in 2016 and 2017 and as well as co-curating the Offshore show, I curated a Lucian Freud exhibition and led an education project with a sound artist and poet with Freetown in Sierre Leone partnership. It was a challenge to move to Exeter at the end of 2017 with my teenage sons. We made the move because of my husband’s new academic post at the Uni. Quite quickly I realised I couldn’t continue with my freelance work in Yorkshire so completed the Marinella Senatore project at York Art Gallery before starting as Director of Exeter Culture and freelance at RAMM in February 2018.

© Laura Hopes & Katharine Earnshaw detail of Not a (field)guide to the Future 2024 (front cover) Dartmoor Exeter 2024

© Laura Hopes & Katharine Earnshaw detail of Not a (field)guide to the Future 2024 (stones standing) Dartmoor Exeter 2024

© Nicholas JR White, Gorse in Heather from the Crucible series, 2020 (Dartmoor, RAMM, Exeter, 2024)

You are currently curating "Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape," which explores Dartmoor through photography over 55 years by various artists. What practical challenges did you face during its development?

LG: Asking for loans is always time consuming and must be done long in advance of the opening. I asked for the first loan in Spring 2022 so over two and a half years ago but some of the full costs associated with borrowing weren’t clear until further down the line, for example one loan suddenly had to be which really stretched our budgets. Fortunately, the Dartmoor Preservation Association have been an incredible Lead Partner and their support have enabled much of the framing for display.

© Nicholas JR White, Observation Post 6 from The Militarisation of Dartmoor series, 2013 (Dartmoor, RAMM, Exeter, 2024) 

From a curatorial perspective, what choices influenced your selection of the final exhibition layout?

LG: That’s a really tough one because curating is all about holding many ideas, artists, information, and the gallery space in your head. In fact, I’ve just come from doing a tour for Magic Carpet Arts which a regular visitor overhead and wanted to come and congratulate me afterwards, she said the exhibition was like many webs that have all found each other, which I like. There are many layers and connections in the exhibition and it probably requires two or three visits to get it all.
Once I had the agreed list of works, I worked with RAMM’s brilliant Exhibitions Officer and Designer with Sketch Up to layout the space long before the works came into the gallery. I knew I wanted to start with Marie Yates and Nancy Holt so that informed the start of the layout and I knew I wanted Garry Fabian Miller’s early work and the new RAMM acquisition ‘Darkroom’s Fading Presence’ which was made in 2020 to be both separate and seen simultaneously as you moved into the larger gallery. With those parameters it gave my colleagues something to work with and then we worked as a team to get it just right. Once we had all the works in the space, I could swop specific artist works within their group and the great technical team brought their suggestions for best hanging methods too. Susan Derges’s Eden series of 3 large cameraless works of the River Taw are incredibly powerful and require just the right spacing and just the right height – that took a bit of time getting just right. Also, I do involve the artists where possible so that’s a lot of input to negotiate.

© Ashish Ghadiali, Slide 1, 2024, (Dartmoor, RAMM, Exeter, 2024)

© Ashish Ghadiali, Cinematics of Gaia and Magic 5, 2024, (Dartmoor, RAMM, Exeter, 2024)

What key insights have you gained from this project regarding the theme and your curatorial practice?

LG: I have done so many talks and tours in the first two weeks of it being open to the public and I’ve learnt that Dartmoor has a special place in people’s hearts, particularly for people living in Devon. I’m very proud that despite only having lived in Exeter for 7 years, a colleague who grew-up in Devon, felt I’d really captured the essence of Dartmoor in the exhibition. I think we can all find special places to call ‘home’, we don’t have to be from there, and certain places can have an impact on the cultural imagination. I think I’ve learnt that curating the hyper-local can be especially meaningful.

Sian Davey, from the River Series, 2016 (Dartmoor, RAMM, Exeter, 2024) © Sian Davey; courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery

The landscape of art curation has changed significantly in recent years due to digital media and technology. How do you engage with social networks and the broader art field? What do you envision for the future of curation?

LG: I’m not on X – I was on Twitter but when it changed I left. My main social media use is through Instagram where so many artists interact. I did find an artist for one of my shows via Instagram. It’s helpful as I can’t get to London that often. The term ‘curator’ has become ubiquitous, there’s people curating menus etc... but there’s not actually that many curators. And, the role of curator always selecting the works for exhibition is becoming less common as more community groups become involved. Co-curation with a polyphonic approach is an exciting development in recent years though it does have to managed very carefully, everyone involved needs plenty of time.