From my understanding of the reading a topic and a theme are different because a topic is a broad area that can contain countless perspectives, and those perspectives can generate themes. When deciding on the direction of an exhibition it is probably more important to focus on a creating a theme. A good theme will give more direction to an exhibition. For our assignment we have to focus on issues in contemporary American society. A topic could be any number of things such as technology, which is very general. A theme could be about the dependency on technology that has developed in a leading first world country. Then the exhibit can work toward exploring the questions like who, what, when, where, and why.

The purpose of this reading was to better understand the curatorial process and what the responsibilities of an exhibition maker are. The ultimate responsibility of the person creating an exhibition is the artwork. Their responsibility to art is met by making a lot of decisions, lighting, signage, fonts, wall color, brochures etc. They must make all of these decisions in the best interest of the art so it can be consumed by the audience in its intended form. This means it must aid the purpose of the work, talk to the artist about that, and not change the perspective.