The Shanghai Curators Lab (SCL) is a forum for emerging curators to discuss the expanding role of curators, evolving from narrative-builders in art to mediators of social communities. Until now, curators have been recognized as storytellers who narrate and interpret visual art through exhibitions. However, what is demanded of curators by today's expanded social community, which encompasses art, architecture, urban planning, climate crisis, and technological revolutions, is a multifaceted practice in an expanded field. 

Curating has moved beyond the niche of high culture and into the realm of everyday life, to the extent that the term is increasingly recognized as simply “making choices.” Rather than implementing "exclusive choices for a minority" in institutional contexts such as museums or biennials, the Shanghai Curators Lab respects methodologies and discursive processes from diverse research areas while questioning the act of curation as the process of selection.

The Shanghai Curators Lab (Principal Li Xiangning, Vice President of Tongji University) was founded by renowned curator Yongwoo Lee in 2018 as an idea platform for emerging curators under the age of 30. It defines a wide range of programmers, including not only art exhibition makers but also big data researchers who diagnose and contextualize the era of technological revolutions, as well as those who respect and understand crisis-stricken communities which are buried under the waves of modernity and individuality.

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