A productive framework specifies where authority sits, how participants enter, what can change, what must remain stable and how results return to the field.

A curatorial framework is strongest when it defines the conditions of action without predetermining the action itself. The problem is not whether curators should direct or withdraw, but how direction can be made legible, revisable and proportionate. O’Neill’s layered organisation, Sternfeld and Ziaja’s post-representational curating, Richter’s educational turn, Kolb and Richter’s scores, and UNIDEE’s long-term pedagogy all shift attention from the authored object to the arrangement of conditions. Structure is not the enemy of openness; unexamined structure is.