The curatorial is a discursive formation that has emerged from critical engagements with curating as a practice of object presentation and a rejection of dominant practices of knowledge formation traditionally associated with the museum. In this article, I argue that the curatorial in fact makes use of the relational potentialities of the museum display, but, in so doing, is in danger of overlooking the critical opportunity disavowed by traditional museology that lies at the heart of the museum: the irreducible gaps of the exhibitionary encounter. To unfold both the relational power of the museum’s display mechanisms and the ever-presence of distance in moments of exhibitionary proximity, I use an early critique by Mieke Bal of the American Museum of Natural History. Arguing that what Bal makes evident is the impossibility of total coincidence in practices of museum ‘showing’, I turn, in conclusion, to the work of artists Fred Wilson and Jade Montserrat to suggest how the gaps within exhibition display may be (re)practiced.