External curatorial and strategic support for cultural institutions2026-06-12T15:54:41+02:00

External curatorial and strategic support for cultural institutions

DLightful Services provides smaller and mid-sized cultural institutions — museums, galleries, libraries with exhibition programmes, foundations, university art collections — with the external expertise they cannot easily resource internally. Curatorial development, audience-facing programming, virtual and digital exhibition design, strategic positioning, EU grant writing, and bilingual editorial support, delivered by a small, credentialed team based in Split, Croatia and working across the Central and Southern European region.

If your institution has more programming ambition than internal capacity, more good ideas than time to write them up, or a digital project sitting in a long queue behind the day-to-day, this is what we exist to address.

What we do

Curatorial services, museum and gallery consulting, and digital exhibition production — the work an external curator and arts consultant takes on so your team doesn’t have to carry it alone.

Guest curation

Solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, thematic displays, retrospectives. Full process from concept through opening: research, conceptual framework, artist liaison, catalogue text, installation planning, opening, and post-exhibition documentation. Fee: €1,200–3,500 per exhibition, scope-dependent.

Catalogue essays and exhibition texts

Scholarly and accessible writing on contemporary art, with specialisation in appropriation, post-conceptual practice, mid-to-late twentieth-century Central European art, and digital and virtual artistic practice. Texts produced in either Croatian or English, or in parallel bilingual editions for international audiences. Fee: €300–800 per text.

Educational and public programming

Pedagogical programmes for school groups, university students, and general audiences — workshops, lectures, guided discussions, gallery talks. Dora’s secondary and university teaching experience translates directly into programmes designed to land with non-specialist audiences without being condescending. Programmes can be developed once and re-delivered across a season, which is often the most cost-effective format for smaller institutions. Fee: €500–1,200 per programme.

Strategic advisory and audience development

Short and medium-term consulting on organisational development, audience strategy, repositioning, and institutional communications. Particularly relevant for smaller European institutions navigating digital transition, post-pandemic audience reconstruction, or generational handovers in leadership. Engagements typically combine an initial diagnostic phase, a written assessment, and an implementation period with periodic check-ins. Fee: €2,000–5,000 per defined engagement.

EU and foundation grant writing

Creative Europe, Erasmus+ KA2, Interreg, national-level funding in Croatian and other Central European jurisdictions, and major foundation grants. Includes narrative, activity planning, budget structure, evaluation framework, and partner coordination where applicable. Most useful for smaller institutions without dedicated grant-writing capacity in-house. Fee: €800–2,500 per application.

Virtual exhibitions and 3D installations.

Conceptualisation and deployment of virtual exhibition spaces using the Vortic platform, photogrammetric documentation of artworks, Blender-based post-production, and integration with institutional websites. This is a service line built on direct experience — DLightful Gallery, our own virtual commercial gallery, is the first fully virtual gallery in Croatia and serves as both proof of concept and ongoing development laboratory. Useful for institutions with strong collections but limited physical exhibition space, or as a way to extend the reach of a physical exhibition beyond its run. Fee: €3,000–8,000 per project.

Specialised translation and editorial work

Native-level bilingual translation and editing between Croatian and English — exhibition texts, catalogues, scholarly articles, monographs, academic publications. Recent academic editing work for the Institute of Art History at the University of Warsaw, published by Brill. Suitable for institutions producing bilingual publications or seeking to reach English-language scholarly and general audiences. Fee: by arrangement based on type and scope.

Non-generative AI advisory

Consulting and training on the use of non-generative AI tools by museum and gallery staff — research assistance, drafting under supervision, translation, administrative streamlining. Explicitly excludes generative AI in artistic production; the engagement is about freeing institutional staff time, not about producing artistic content. Includes a written workflow audit, a working session with staff, and a 30-day follow-up window for questions as the new workflows are adopted. Useful for under-resourced institutions managing high administrative loads. Fee: €1,500–3,500 per engagement.

Spotlight Your Art

Whether you’re a museum planning your next major exhibition, a gallery developing your curatorial program, or a small non-profit gallery space starting from scratch and looking for funding, we provide the expertise and support that brings creative visions to life. We combine academic rigor with practical experience, offering comprehensive solutions tailored to your unique needs in the arts and culture sector.

How we work together

Engagement models. Three structures, each suited to a different kind of relationship.

  • A retainer relationship runs €400–800 per month on a twelve-month minimum. It includes a monthly review call, light advisory between named projects, first refusal on projects matching the institution’s needs, and preferential rates on project work commissioned during the retainer period. Best suited to institutions with ongoing curatorial, programming, or strategic needs and a recognisable monthly external-services line in their budget.

  • A project engagement is fixed-fee, scope-defined, and billed against named deliverables. Best suited to one-off exhibitions, specific grant applications, or defined consulting engagements with a clear beginning and end. Payment is typically structured in two or three tranches across the timeline (commencement, midpoint, delivery).

  • A hybrid engagement combines a modest retainer (€200/month) with project fees at preferred rates. This is the structure most institutions land on after the first engagement — enough continuity to feel like an ongoing relationship without the commitment of a full retainer.

A free 30-minute consultation is available to discuss your institution’s specific needs. You can request one by email or via the contact form below.

Our process

1.

Free consultation

A typical engagement begins with a free 30-minute consultation, in which we discuss your institution’s specific needs and constraints and identify whether the fit is right.

2.

Proposal

If it is, a written proposal follows within one week — including scope, timeline, deliverables, and a fee structure.

3.

Collaboration

Once accepted, work proceeds against the agreed timeline with periodic written updates and adjustment as needed.

4.

Debriefing & reporting

Most engagements close with a brief written debrief, particularly when the relationship is likely to continue.

Billing

All engagements are billed via DLightful Services as a registered Croatian obrt (sole proprietorship). Institutions in EU jurisdictions can process payments as standard B2B service procurement, with appropriate VAT handling. Croatian institutions can also engage Dora directly via ugovor o autorskom djelu (authorial contract) for individual authorial deliverables; this is often the cleanest contract type for project work that qualifies as original intellectual creation under Croatian law.

We’ve worked with…

Who we are

DLightful Services is led by Dora Derado Giljanović, PhD — an art historian, independent curator, and bilingual scholar with over a decade of work in the Croatian and international art sectors.

Dora holds a PhD in art history from the University of Zagreb (2023), with a dissertation on Appropriation Strategies in Contemporary Art in Croatia. She holds dual master’s degrees in art history and English language and literature, both with pedagogical specialisation. Before founding DLightful Services, she worked as a teaching assistant in art history at the University of Split, taught visual arts at secondary school level, and built a curatorial practice within and outside institutional settings. She is a member of the Croatian section of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and has served on the Curatorial Team of HULU Split since 2016. She writes regularly for Kontura art magazine and has published peer-reviewed scholarship in Croatian and international journals.

Her training as a painter (graduate of the School of Fine Arts in Split) and her bilingual upbringing in England and Croatia give the work a specific texture: technical fluency with what artists actually do, and a writing voice equally at home in scholarly Croatian and native-level English. The combination is rare enough to be useful for institutions that need both registers in the same engagement.

She is supported in research, design, and preparatory work by Lucija Ečim. Specialist collaborators — architects, designers, conservators, technical producers — are brought in for specific projects when scope requires.

Dora Derado Giljanović, PhD, curator and art manager -DLightful Services_dr. sc. Dora Derado Giljanović, kustosica i umjetnička menadžerica, osnivačica obrta DLightful Services

FAQs

Do you work with institutions outside Croatia?2026-06-12T13:07:11+02:00

Yes. The retainer + project model is particularly well-suited to smaller institutions across Central and Southern Europe. Engagements are typically conducted remotely, with on-site work for installations, openings, and specific in-person sessions when scope and budget allow.

Can you write in our institutional voice rather than your own?2026-06-12T13:08:39+02:00

Yes. For institutional communications, grant applications, and editorial work, the voice of the deliverable belongs to the institution. Stylistic alignment is part of the engagement scoping.

Do you produce generative AI imagery, AI-generated catalogue text, or other AI-generated content?2026-06-12T13:11:27+02:00

No. The work is authored. AI tools assist with research and drafting under direct supervision, but every deliverable is written, edited, and authored by us. This is a deliberate position, not a technical limitation.

Are you available for one-off short engagements (a single text, a single talk)?2026-06-12T13:12:15+02:00

Yes, with the caveat that booking lead time may be longer than for full project engagements. Single texts and individual lectures or programmes are often the entry point for what later becomes an ongoing relationship.

Can you handle EU grant applications where multiple partners are involved?2026-06-12T13:13:26+02:00

Yes, including the partner coordination and the technical documentation required by most EU programmes. Multi-partner applications are billed at the upper end of the grant-writing range or as a defined consulting engagement, depending on scope.

What is your typical response time to an initial enquiry?2026-06-12T13:13:59+02:00

Within two business days for an initial reply; within one week for a written proposal once scope is agreed.

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