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30 Oct 2013

Reith Lectures 2013 – ‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’

Reith Lectures 2013
Grayson Perry: Playing to the gallery
‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’ (Episode 3 of 4)
This year the BBC Reith Lectures delve into our increasingly globalised landscape, characteristic of the twenty-first century, exploring the implications that this has on the role and place of art in contemporary society. The series delivered by Turner-Prize winning artist Grayson Perry tasks us with such topics as ‘what is the role of art today?’, ‘what are the limits of contemporary art?’, ‘how are judgements made about quality and who makes them?’


Grayson Perry has created a series of drawing exclusive to the 2013 Reith Lectures.
So far this year’s lecture series has sought to address and define the nature of what art is and question its parameters. ‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’, instead tackles the nature of the role of art today. The third Reith Lecture in the series, broadcast from Londonderry’s Guildhall, the UK’s City of Culture 2013 poses the question ‘Is revolution in art dead?’ To what extent does the consideration of ‘revolution’ as a defining concept in art and calling card of avant gardism still hold weight in the world of contemporary art or are artists simply perpetuating what has already been done?  In an age of mainstream media where we are forever being bombarded with imagery, Perry asks if art has lost its ability to shock - have we really seen it all before?
There is a tendency to hold up ‘art’ as a kind of melting pot of innovative newness, yet contemporary art often falls victim to the fad in a futile search for the next new thing. The once outrageous and subversive rapidly diffuse into the everyday – revolution commodified. Its representation in mainstream media tells us that it is avant garde or cutting edge or revolutionary, that the artists who produce it are radical, that the galleries that show it are game-changing. A new paradigm is always being set by these shows that ‘everyone’ is talking about, the hype in turn further perpetuated by the media.
Perry claims that we have now reached the ‘end state’ of art, that since the mid-sixties and early seventies artists have run out of things to try, producing a state where anything can be art. He goes on to argue that this doesn’t mean the end of art itself, just the end of this notion that it is still possible to step beyond the boundaries of what art can be. Can there still be originality in art, or is innovation now only a form of tweaking? – certainly a dilemma for the post(post)modern artist.
Perry describes this concept of revolution as being fundamental to the idea of being an artist and by extension the very DNA of art itself, yet revolution in art has ceased to be the defining idea. In light of this, where is art situated in our culture today? Has art now reached a state where we have finally run out of ‘isms’? If the twentieth century was ‘the age of manifestos’, what will come to define the twenty-first century or has the art world already stepped into the breach with a whole host of new ‘isms’? Pluralism...Globalism...Commercialism...
Perry considers the possibly that now is it technology that has replaced art as a source of innovation and as capable of inciting revolution. In a role reversal art now follows technology rather than leads it. He asks if technology changes the way that we look at art and what this means for the status or role of art (and the artist) in society.
Art will inevitably continue to evolve, yet perhaps the role of art in contemporary society is shifting and that which shocks or provokes revolution is the task of culture beyond the art world...is the age of the avant garde truly over?
‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’ is now available to download from BBC Radio4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f9bg7
The fourth and final lecture in the series ‘I Found Myself in the Art World’ will be broadcast Tuesday 5th November, 09:00 BBC Radio4.

29 Oct 2013

'Imaginary Exhibitions' conference at the Henry Moore Institute 6-7 November 2013

***Only £5 for students*** Book HERE

This two day conference explores imaginary exhibition projects, ranging from the utopian to the tentative, the immaterial to the highly materialised, through to those hampered by logistics or inscribed with impossibility from their inception.

This is a development of the Institute’s on-going research into 'Sculpture and its Exhibition Histories'. Through this project we address how developments in sculpture have impacted upon the spaces of exhibition, how the material conditions of the display of sculpture have played increasingly important roles in the meaning and making of sculpture as an art form, how the modes of presenting sculpture have shifted and how curatorial practice has impacted on the understanding of sculpture, and vice versa.

This conference seeks to look beyond formal records and more familiar images of sculpture and exhibitions by looking at the place of the 'imaginary exhibition' within this narrative. The motives and scales of such projects vary and instances of these 'imaginary exhibitions' are to be found internationally, across the modern and contemporary period. This turn to the ephemeral, invisible and ill-fated will draw out the eccentric and idiosyncratic in the shadows of art history, as opposed to the more usual highly-polished exhibition surface.

Wednesday 6 November

11.30-1: Session 1: The Imaginary Spaces of 1930s sculpture
Chair: Jon Wood (Henry Moore Institute)

Annabelle Goergen-Lammers (Hamburger Kunsthalle)
‘Alberto Giacometti: Progetti Per Cose Grandi Nel Aperto’

Sophie Martin (University of Bristol)
‘‘Constructing Space’: Transcribing sculpture in Circle; International Survey of Constructive Art (1937)’

1-2: Lunch in boardroom

2-3.30: Session 2: Sculpture’s Staging and Scenography
Chair: Lisa Le Feuvre (Henry Moore Institute)

Paola Nicolin (Luigi Bocconi University)
‘The ‘Me’ You Will Never See: Maurizio Cattelan Backstage Exhibition at Guggenheim New York’

John C. Welchman (University of California, San Diego)
‘Rigging: The Imaginary as Studio-Production in the work of Paul McCarthy’

3.30-4.15: Tea in boardroom

4.15-5.45: Session 3: Exhibitions without sculptures
Chair: John C. Welchman (University of California, San Diego)

Filipa Ramos (Independent Curator)
‘I Would Prefer Not To – A Taxonomy of Artists Without Works’

Jeremy Millar (Artist/Royal College of Art)
‘Sculpture of the Space Age’

5.45-7: Wine reception and publication launches: Sculpture and the Vitrine and My Life by Anton Lesseman, with John Welchman and Paul Becker, respectively

Thursday 7 November

9.30-11: Session 4: Unrealised and invisible exhibitions
Chair: Rebecca Wade (HMF Post-Doctoral Fellow, Henry Moore Institute)

Tania Doropoulos (Royal College of Art)
‘The 1959 Situationist International Dynamic Labyrinth at the Stedelik Museum’

Dawna Schuld (Indiana University)
‘Nothing to Show for It: Art and Technology in the age of de-materialization’

11-11.30: Coffee break

11.30-1: Session 4: Invisible and unrealised exhibitions
Chair: Lisa Le Feuvre (Henry Moore Institute)

Birgit Eusterschulte (Freie Universität)
‘From a Measured Volume to Indefinite Expansion: Robert Barry’s Presentation of Inert Gas Series in California’

Penelope Curtis (Tate Britain)
On not exhibiting Robert Morris’ work

Lunch 1-2pm

2-3.30: Session 5: Photographic and digital imaginary exhibitions
Chair: Uta Kogelsberger (Newcastle University)

Magdalena Wroblewska (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Max-Planck-Institut)
‘‘Le muse imaginaire’: between material object and its virtual representation’

Angela Bartholomew (Vrije Universiteit)
‘Marble Public and the Agency of Media(tion)’

3.30: End of conference

24 Oct 2013

Reith Lectures 2013 - 'Beating the Bounds'

Reith Lectures 2013
Grayson Perry: Playing to the gallery
‘Beating the Bounds’ (Episode 2 of 4)
The 2013 series sees an exploration of the role and place of art in the global landscape today, addressing a wide range of issues and questions concerning the role of art in society, the limits of contemporary art and how judgements are made about quality.

Grayson Perry has created a series of drawings exclusive to the 2013 Reith Lectures.
In this second instalment from this year’s Reith lecturer Grayson Perry, broadcast from St. Georges Hall, Liverpool, Perry examines what the boundaries of art are, or rather what constitutes art. What exactly does and perhaps equally importantly does not qualify as contemporary art? Has this question been answered already? Perhaps the art world would argue that it has. Perry points out that today there is an almost complacency about this fundamental question – Is this art? – with a widely circulated notion that anything can be art now in a ‘post-post modern’ society, the end of art where absolutely anything goes...
The crux of Perry’s second lecture argues that there are boundaries that remain with regards to what can and cannot be art; however the limits are now blurred. Perry suggests that the boundaries that remain lean towards (in his words) the ‘sociological, tribal, philosophical and even financial’. What are the motivations for making art? Obviously there’s the ‘art for art’s sake’ claim, but also the economic incentive of proclaiming something as art is difficult to ignore, with so much money changing hands in the art market.
It is one thing to categorise something as being art, but is it possible to negate an object deemed a work of art and make it non-art once again? Perry suggests that a work of art perhaps is no longer a work of art once it becomes famous and takes on an almost celebrity-like persona (such as the Mona Lisa), or once it is only viewed in terms of is monetary value above all else and becomes as Perry eloquently puts it ‘a great lump of money on the wall’.
The concept of art and what could and couldn’t be considered art was widely taken for granted until the arrival of modernism and artists started to question the nature of art and Duchamp and his ‘readymades’ opened up the possibility for anything to be art if the artist declares it as such. Since the 1960s anything can be art and art has become a very broad concept, where shock-value has become commonplace and increasingly extreme. Yet, the idea of the ‘traditional’ still pervades, with painting and sculpture retaining their status as ‘high art’.
Perry breaks down the boundaries of what is and what isn’t art with a checklist or recipe for an artwork... and here they are:
Grayson Perry’s ‘boundary markers’ for whether or not something is art...
1.      Is it in a gallery or an art context?
2.      Is it a boring version of something else? (idea that art is not pleasurable)
3.      Is it made by an artist?
4.      Photography – Problematic (how do you tell if a photo is art? – size, subject, value)
5.      Limited edition test
6.      The handbag and hipster test (who are the people looking at the ‘art’ – rich and educated?)
7.      Theme Park + Suduko (Are people queuing to look at it?)
8.      Rubbish dump test (Throw it on a rubbish dump and if people walking by notice it’s there and wonder why the ‘art’ is there)...except if the rubbish dump is itself the art!
9.      The ‘Computer art’ test (Is it frustrating and does it make you pause and think rather than simply react)
These novel criteria for working out if something is art demonstrate that boundaries are formed not by what art can be but instead where, who or why it is art.
‘Beating the Bounds’ is now available to download from BBC Radio4 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03dsk4d
The third lecture in the series ‘Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!’, will be broadcast Tuesday 29th October, 09:00 BBC Radio4.

22 Oct 2013

Visiting Artist Talk | Penelope Curtis | 23.10.13


Reith Lectures 2013 - Democracy Has Bad Taste

Reith Lectures 2013

Grayson Perry: Playing to the gallery
‘Democracy Has Bad Taste’ (Episode 1 of 4)

What are the Reith lectures? Launched in 1948 by the BBC to honour the contribution of Lord John Reith to public service broadcasting, the Reith lectures are an annual radio lectures series delivered by leading figures which address important contemporary issues. Since the first lecture delivered back in 1948 by the philosopher Bertrand Russell ‘Authority and the Individual’, series have been delivered by figures such as Aung San Suu Kyi (2011), Nickolaus Pevsner (1955), Robert Oppenheimer (1953), Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks (1990), and Dr Steve Jones (1991).

This year the honour of delivering the Reith lectures has been bestowed upon Grayson Perry, Turner Prize winning artist & self-proclaimed satirical social commentator, who models himself as a modern day Hogarth. Perry’s topic for this year’s Reith lectures is by no means the artist’s first foray into reflecting on the relationship between social class and aesthetic taste as evident in his series for Channel 4 ‘All in the best possible taste’ and the series of six tapestries produced in the process. The tapestries took centre-stage at this year’s Royal Academy Summer Exhibition entitled ‘the Vanity of Small Differences’, a modern take on Hogarth’s A Rake’s progress.

The title of this year’s series ‘Playing to the Gallery’ can itself perhaps be interpreted in several ways - Playing to the gallery, literally meaning to aim to please or satisfy the general public, yet at the same time referencing the art world in which Perry is himself a part, where such importance is placed on the ‘gallery’ and elite judgements made about the objects housed within it. At a more basic level, Perry as a visual artist delivering the lectures to a live audience - his very own physical public gallery - at Tate Modern could be perceived as being a performance which ‘plays to the crowd’.

The aim of these lectures is according to the artist, to provide anyone the basic tools necessary to ‘judge’ art. Although in his address, Perry acknowledges that this is perhaps a difficult task and that not everyone can ‘appreciate’ art straight away on first viewing and that often it takes time to get used to long winded arty words and conventions and also understanding its history.

 
Grayson Perry has created some exclusive drawings for the 2013 Reith Lectures.

Perry attempts to address the relationship between quality and popularity. Is good art popular? – Perry makes reference to Hockney’s recent retrospective at the Royal Academy, which although very ‘popular’ perhaps didn’t appeal to the taste-makers or those Perry calls ‘the chorus of validation’ - the dealers, collectors and curators - who tend to set the criteria for the judgement of taste. This panel make judgements about quality and determine what we, the public will see on the walls of a museum or gallery.

In a time where public art is becoming increasingly visible, artists like Damian Hirst are their own PR machines, and if this summer is anything to go by, visiting exhibitions has reached new heights of popularity. Is art becoming more or less democratic and how can we tell? The lecture’s assertion that democracy has bad taste, where popular art doesn’t necessarily follow the ‘good’ taste of Perry’s chorus of validation is a result of the closed nature of the art world, which continues to substantiate its authority to make judgements about taste.


Grayson Perry has created some exclusive drawings for the 2013 Reith Lectures.

Perry’s first lecture explores the channels through which art must pass through before it ultimately finds itself in museums and galleries and Biennales and what this tells us about taste – if a work of art is in a national collection or exhibited at an internationally renowned venue is it good art? - and do we the public have to like it just because we are told that we should? 
The first instalment from Grayson Perry (for anyone interested) is now available to download from BBC Radio4 via http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03969vt (the entire back catalogue of Reith Lectures are also available online with the exception of 1992, when the BBC for some unknown reason couldn’t find anyone to speak!)
The next lecture ‘Beating the Bounds’ will be available to download from today.

16 Oct 2013

TOUCH AND TWEET! A Stedelijk museum exhibition

Ever since attending Magriet Schavemaker's talk on 'The potential of Augmented Reality' (Tate Modern, August 2012), I've had the Stedelijk museum website as a permanent fixture on my bookmarks tab! (Margriet is Head of Collections at the Stedelijk).

Located in Amsterdam, Stedelijk is a museum that puts innovation at the center of their collection use and exhibition design. These are images from their current exhibition: Touch and tweet! Made up of two works by Hellicar & Lewis, and one by dutch designer Daan Roosegaarde.

Devoted to interactive installations, the exhibits are responsive to each viewer's touch and movement. This reminded me of the 2009 V&A exhibition 'Decode: Digital Design Sensations', which similarly showcased the latest (exciting) developments in digital and interactive design. The exhibition includes 'The Hello Cube' (previously exhibited [and designed for] Tate Modern, 2012), which responds to physical movement and sound in the gallery as well as commands sent to it from Twitter.

I especially like the middle image below: 'Feedback'. I like how it's fragmented visual appearance mirrors the multiplicity of it's permanently shifting and reactive form. I also think it's just a really great image.

Click here to watch a video of the exhibition.

 Dan Roosegaarde, Dune, 2006-2013
Dune (2013) by Daan Roosegaarde is an interactive landscape of light that responds to movement and touch. It can also be installed outdoors where it can help to create a greater sense of safety in badly-lit areas. With this, the work falls into the category of social design. Dune is made out of recycled polymer and LED lights operated by interactive software.
Feedback
Feedback (2010) is inspired by the halls of mirrors you find at fairgrounds and theme parks. The software manipulates your digital image in response to your movements. The installation documents the images that are generated so they can be re-used later on. 


Somantics
Somantics (2010) is a series of different software modules designed to boost autistic children’s self-confidence. By enhancing their awareness of their physical potential, the modules encourage the children to become more independent. Visitors can move about in front of the camera and see how the shapes in the projection change in response to their movements.

12 Oct 2013

Curating Photographs | Stefan Lorant | Lilliput Magazine

In 1937, Stefan Lorant (a founding father of photojournalism & experienced editor and art director) launched Lilliput magazine. Here is a selection of Lorant's famous 'doubles'; where he placed together photographs which resembled one another in some formal and/or thematic way. I really like them!











10 Oct 2013

'A Roundup of Terrific Articles'

Museum 2.0

Here I am re-posting from Nina Simon's blog 'Museum 2.0', as I thought it may well be of interest to most of us! (Read on especially if you are someone who is interested in experience design and participation in museums).

For those who don't know her, Nina Simon is the Exec Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History and author of The Participatory Museum. Simon's blog 'Museum 2.0' is a platform for her exploration of how web 2.0 philosophies can be applied in museum design. I always find her posts very interesting to read, off the back of her current design and research into participatory museum experiences.

I came across her last year when researching experience design!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Repost: 'A Roundup of Terrific Articles'
Source: http://museumtwo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/back-to-blogging-with-roundup-of.html

"This week, I thought I'd ease back in by offering a roundup of five of the most interesting bits I've encountered online in the past two months.

IF YOU READ NOTHING ELSE... read The Northwest London Blues - a gorgeous essay by novelist Zadie Smith about libraries, British politics, and changing perspectives on community space. She knits together nostalgia and activism with a level of nuance rarely found in debates about the value of museums, libraries, and other cultural spaces. Here's a taste:
And the thing that is most boring about defending libraries is the imputation that an argument in defense of libraries is necessarily a social-liberal argument. It’s only recently that I had any idea that how a person felt about libraries—not schools or hospitals, libraries—could even represent an ideological split. I thought a library was one of the few sites where the urge to conserve and the desire to improve—twin poles of our political mind—were easily and naturally united. 
Give yourself a long afternoon and read it.

OR IF YOU HAVE A SHORTER ATTENTION SPAN... you may share the common opinion that baseball is too damn slow. In a useful post, Doug Borwick suggests that art is like baseball: declining in relevance. Doug offers analogies between the challenges faced by Major League Baseball and those of traditional arts institutions: a legacy practice that has gotten more commercial but not more connected to real people and real communities. Check out the comments for more unlikely connections between Mao and the American national past time.

SPEAKING OF RELEVANCE... the NEA has just released the highlights reel of the 2012 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, featuring increases in arts engagement via electronic media, art-making and sharing, movies, and reading, and decreases in attendance to visual and performing arts. There's a lot more to unpack here; Reach Advisors took a first stab from a museum-centered perspective with a rousing call-to-action in response to declining attendance. Again, the comments are meaty and worth reading.

AND SPEAKING OF DIGITAL PARTICIPATION... ArtsFwd is hosting a national innovation summit for arts and culture October 20-23 in Denver. It appears that the in-person event is limited to participants from fourteen cities (funder-selected?), but they are offering a virtual live stream for free. Strangely, it's not easy to figure out who is speaking on which topic, but the topics and format look compelling. Full schedule here. Update: you can find the speakers here and they are truly awesome.

NAKED, BLEEDING THIEF BREAKS INTO MUSEUM, SPENDS THE NIGHT REARRANGING ITS STORAGE FACILITY. This is mostly just a really great headline. Though the curator's quote is pretty fabulous, too."

9 Oct 2013

B L O G - O N - T H E - G O !

Well this is convenient! For those of you who want to take blogging to the next level I would highly recommend the 'Blogger' App. Even if it's just to check the 'Arts Calendar' on the move, or to post a photo when at a museum...
B L O G - O N - T H E - G O ! 





Facebook Page

Hi everyone!
Helen recently let me know that this Facebook page exists:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Centre-for-Critical-Studies-in-Museums-Galleries-and-Heritage/449180088466852



It seems to be the go-to place for all the important info about what's going on within our Faculty.
I'm going to put all the dates in the 'Arts Calendar' tab & try and link it onto the blog. Give it a Like!

8 Oct 2013

What Country House?

Rosa. This is an informal but relevant post (I hope!); it involves a quiz question though.  Which country house, that you may have glimpsed recently, is described here in the EH listing, Those of us doing Kerry's courses are gaining the ability to interpret and understand this technical linguage.

House. Circa 1800 with c.1820 additions. Possibly by Charles Harcourt Masters
of Bath. Ashlar with slate roofs. Classical style with neo-Classical porches.
Entrance front of 2 storeys, 13 bays: 5 bay slightly advanced central pedimented
block, lower flanking wings with advanced pedimented end bays. Centre block has
round-headed openings to ground floor, straight headed above. At time of
resurvey (May 1985) these were being refenestrated with 6 pane sashes. Flanking
wings have C19 casements, end bays have Venetian windows to ground floor (that to
east blocked) and tripartite openings above, all with C19 casements. Greek Doric
tetrastyle porch with ironwork balcony above. Venetian doorway with 8 raised and
fielded panel door and reveals, patterned fanlight. Moulded cornice, plain
parapet, ashlar stacks with terracotta pots. 2 storey and 1 storey service
additions to left hand. Garden front of similar design but with 2 semi-circular
bows to centre block with distyle Ionic porch between and balcony above. End
bays have tripartite windows to ground floor with consoles to entablature and vase 
and swag friezes. Interior. Entrance Hall with 3 bay coupled Tuscan column
arcade, oval domed stairwell. Several fine chimney pieces. Grounds laid out by
C.H. Masters c.1800. (R. Cooke, West Country Houses, 1957).

First correct answer wins a slice of carrot cake.

7 Oct 2013

Film on Vermeer @ Vue Leeds - Thursday 10th October 2013

This Thursday 10th October, Vue (Kirkstall Road) will be one of 70 cinemas across the UK and one of over 1000 venues in 30 other countries screening 'Vermeer and Music: The Art of Love and Leisure'. Filmed by award-winning arts documentary maker Phil Grabsky, the movie features exclusive footage from the exhibition of the same name that took place at the National Gallery, London. It follows the art historian and broadcaster Tim Marlow, who travels across the world to gain more insight into the artist's life, showing us many of Vermeer's works in high-definition detail. 



So come one, come all (and save room for the popcorn!)

To book tickets click here
Student tickets are £7.50

For information about the scheme click here
For more on the exhibition click here

Free events (and food!) on 17 October

Attention new HAMS and MAAGMS students! (And other interested parties of course...)

New to Leeds? Interested in the history the city and its exhibitions? Receptive to freebies?

Come along on a guided walk of the sites of temporary exhibitions in nineteenth-century Leeds, meeting and concluding at Leeds City Museum. Stay on for free refreshments and a more in-depth talk and opportunity for discussion in the Brodrick Room (formerly the Arena, formerly-formerly the Albert Hall).

See exhibitingleeds.com for more details.

6 Oct 2013

Participation through Photography

In response to Susan Sontag, “In Plato’s Cave” in On Photography (1977), pp. 1-21. 
A reading I did for my 'Critical Approaches to Photography' module. 


(FIGURE. 1) 

Many of us pick up a camera to take a photograph without awareness of the more intricate reasons that explain why we do it. What I found most interesting about Susan Sontag’s chapter ‘In Plato’s Cave’ is her focus on, and description of, the various motivations behind our habitual use of the camera. Discussing Photography as a tool that incites and enables feelings of power, knowledge, possession, aggression, and most interestingly, participation. 

Whether using the camera to evidence that you are having fun, that you have made a trip, baked a cake or to show off your new puppy; it seems there is a growing need (and pressure) to proclaim one’s existence within today’s social (networking) culture. As Sontag describes: "photography has become a principle device for experiencing something, for giving the appearance of participation". Written in 1971, I would argue that this statement is even truer today; with modern technologies (the iPhone, iPad & laptop) and networks (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram) cementing this use of the camera as a day-to-day, minute-to-minute social rite, particularly among today’s youth culture. 

Sontag later goes on to suggest that this use of the camera is simultaneously an act of ‘non-intervention’. By staring at an event through a lens (or now more commonly, a screen) (Fig. 1), are we participating in the event or in the act of documenting it? 

‘Stop, take a photo, move on’ seems to be a fitting descriptor of much of today’s social behaviour. With the need to demonstate you have a thriving social life (or at the very least an existence) now commonplace, the camera has become an integral tool of social participation - a dependence which will undoubtedly continue to grow.

I have something ridiculous like '62 Albums' on Facebook. I always thought I took photos to remember a certain moment, or to be nostalgic, however it is rare that I click on an Album from 3 months ago, let alone 3 years! By appearing on peoples 'NewsFeed', each as a broadcaster of our own lives, we are filled with the frequently sub-conscious responsibility to document it thoroughly for the sake of others, as well as (or perhaps more than) ourselves. 

--

*This is in reference to one of many motivations behind photo taking, and is not trying to be universally descriptive* 

5 Oct 2013

Brazil Blog

Hello!

My name is Solomon Szekir-Papasavva and I'm currently writing a blog on the 9th Bienal do Mercosul in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The blog focuses on issues surrounding the interpretation and curation of contemporary art, and the extent to which the Bienal's general audience is being engaged.


I graduated from the Art Gallery and Museum Studies MA at Leeds University in 2010, having focused my research on exhibition design and curation. I started working soon after as an education session leader at the Thackray Museum (Leeds), where I also developed a new formal education session on the workhouse. 


Since coming to Brazil last year I have learnt much about the museum sector and cultural interpretation and engagement in Porto Alegre. Here there is not the same tradition of large-scale, state-funded cultural projects and institutions as in the UK, but there is a lot of potential for growth. That is why I have been working free-lance: curating a collective exhibition of local artists, developing education sessions, and writing a blog on the 9th Bienal do Mercosul. I hope you find it interesting, and if you do, please share it with anyone else you think might like it!

2 Oct 2013

Museums Change Lives? (or have they 'redesigned their disguise?' *)

We've just had the first Heritage Discussion Group today, which follows on from the reading group last year. it was lovely to see everybody, and meet some of our new students.

This month, we focussed on thinking about the Museums Change Lives vision, produced by the MA in 2013. The vision proposes:

Museums change people’s lives. They enrich the lives of individuals, contribute to strong and resilient communities, and help create a fair and just society. And museums in turn are enriched by the skills and creativity of their public.

 It follows on from an extensive piece of research they did into attitudes towards museums called Museums 2020.

What I wanted to do here, is not summarise the debate, but perhaps try to allow some of the debate to continue here. So, the things that particularly resonated with me about the discussion were the issues that this vision raises in terms of:
  •  legacy
  • charity
  • criticality
  • politics
  • stability
  • trust
  • ideology
  • partnerships
 I'd really welcome any comments or further posts, which engage with or comment on these ideas.


* I need to credit Katie for this succinct and provocative idea.