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.

Its transdisciplinary research encompasses discourses that emerge from various fields, ranging from the aesthetic implications of visual arts to architecture, urban planning, poetry, film, fashion, food, and health. It also discusses and proposes ideas regarding the technologically deterministic thinking arising surrounding artificial intelligence. Curators have to reinvent their role as interpreters connecting artworks and audiences, as well as media that lead discussions on the rapid changes of today.

Shanghai Curators Lab 4 (SCL4) is organized by the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (CAUP) at Tongji University, co-organized by Tongji Architectural Design (Group), in collaboration with Shanghai Biennale (Power Station of Art, Shanghai), SUSAS (Shanghai Urban Space Art Season), TANK Shanghai, and supported by HOU Art House. The lead professors of the SCL4 are two renowned curators who have long been involved in various projects across diverse fields such as contemporary art, architecture, urbanism, design, and aesthetic discourse.

Nikolaus Hirsch is currently the director of the Centre for International Visual Arts in Brussels (CIVA) and has served as the director of Städelschule in Frankfurt and Portikus. Professor Yongwoo Lee of Tongji University, an art historian and curator, has held positions as the director of the Shanghai Himalayas Museum, the artistic director of the Gwangju Biennale, and the president of the International Biennial Association.