Audio Podcast: Dr Mark Westgarth!

The Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery has initiated a new audio podcasting project, inviting academics from the University of Leeds to talk about an artwork in the Gallery.

A voice familiar to you all is that of Dr Mark Westgarth, who very kindly agreed to take part. Mark spoke on the 'The Striped Jug' (1914) by Ben Nicholson. Listen by going to the 'news' section of the Gallery home page here:

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/gallery/

Biographical Dictionary of 19th Century Antique & Curiosity Dealers

Some of you may know that my Biographical Dictionary of 19th Century Antique & Curiosity Dealers, published in 2009, has now been reprinted, with a fabulous new cover!...it was previously only available to members of the Regional Furniture Society, but is now available to everyone!...You can even order a copy direct from me...email:
m.w.westgarth@leeds.ac.uk

Only £20.00 (plus £2.00 postage, in UK)...get a quote for International posting......if you're interested, of course! Ideal Christmas Present!

The Biographical Dictionary of 19^th Century Antique & Curiosity Dealers is the first attempt to provide comprehensive biographical information about the community of interconnected antique and curiosity dealers active in the nineteenth century. An introduction containing forty one images, mainly in colour, and over twenty pages of text, outlines the origins and development of collecting and the trade in furniture over the period and provides a valuable background to the dictionary entries of over 600 dealers, which range in length from a few lines to over 2000 words. The majority of these dealers were based in London, but others operating throughout the United Kingdom, across Europe, the United States and former British Colonies are also represented. The Biographical Dictionary is a valuable resource for those interested in the history of the ‘antique trade’ and the history of collecting and is the first major research study of the highly significant subject matter.

Mark

MGHG Conference July 2012

Cultures of Curating: Curatorial Practices and the Production of Meaning c. 1650-2000

The 2012 conference of the Museums and Galleries History Group, to be held at the University of Lincoln 12-13 July 2012

Call for papers

While museum history now acknowledges the constructed nature of the museum narrative, and maintains that museum work such as cataloguing, conserving and displaying is not neutral, but actually produces meaning, relatively little work has examined the ways in which curatorial practices have developed, and the specific consequences for museums. Display has attracted most of the work that has been done, but ‘behind the scenes’ activities have not been investigated in such depth. We seek submissions which investigate any aspect of the developing work of the curator, from creating an acquisitions policy, to labelling and documentation, to publicity work, as we wish to explore curating as both craft and profession. We also invite contributors to consider how curatorial practices constituted the museum object, and attempted to produce or suppress certain meanings for museum objects; and how such practices formed particular relationships between curators and other museum figures such as donors and visitors. We are interested in submissions which consider a wide variety of periods and places, and all types of curating, from fine art to science.

Confirmed keynote speaker: Dr Sam Alberti, Director, Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.

We invite papers on themes such as:
How curators were trained, and how they understood their role
Cataloguing and museum documentation
Acquisition – the role of the curator
Conservation and storage
Display and interpretation
How and why curatorial practices changed
The role of place and space in shaping curatorial practices
Curatorial practices, disciplines and discourses of knowledge
Curatorial practices and relationships with the wider public

We also invite session proposals. Session proposals should include a brief outline of the session (250 words) as well as three abstracts (300 words max. each) for the proposed session. For session proposals, please indicate who will chair the session.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to chair@mghg.org or Kate Hill (khill@lincoln.ac.uk)
Closing date for proposals: 1 February 2012

Alice in Wonderland at Tate Liverpool.

A black line. I nearly didn’t notice it. My sense of location in the exhibition shifted dramatically when I understood. This line demonstrates the height to which Alice grew. Consequently, in that moment, I shrank. Already I understood from the other works in this first room that I was somehow ‘in’ the text. However it was through Mel Bockner’s Measurement: Eye level Perimeter (ask Alice) that my sense of my own place and size as viewer shifted again. A very clever curation of works introduced me to the exhibition ‘Alice in Wonderland through the Visual Arts’.

More aware of the nature of my body within the space of the gallery, I climbed the stairs, looking forward to the next part of this exhibition which examines the influence of Alice in Wonderland on the visual arts. Extracts of text on the walls of the stairs took the form of concrete poetry written in perspective. Milder perceptual shifts, but again a clever conceit; a nod to the textual play in the book itself and a continuation of the slight disorientation of space and surface.

Reaching the fourth floor and the exhibition’s main focus, the effects of this hodological disorientation are allowed to disappear, this part of the exhibition reverts to a ‘glass case and pictures on the wall’ survey of material relating to Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) and the Liddell sisters. The dark red wall colour and drapes though, hint at a theatrical and Victorian interior space, entirely appropriate for the displays of early copies of Alice, the original manuscript, photographs of the Liddell sisters and a wealth of Alice ephemera. As you progress through the labyrinthine space, the walls pale, and works become more recent; arranged in themes such as ‘Alice from the 1960’s’, ‘Alice Revisited’ and ‘Storytelling and Time’.

The analogy of being lost in time and space could continue, given that the exhibition is such a comprehensive survey of Alice related material, it requires a level of attention where ones experience of time slows. This though, was perhaps more a result of spending so long with such a variety of material rather than being the result of a curatorial device. However the catalogue ends by suggesting (referencing the authorhsip texts of Barthes and Foucault) that the power of the book lies in the fact that:

a reference to Alice can always be legitimately claimed whenever we, as the viewer, be it museum visitor, art critic, or exhibition curator, discern one and declare it to be so.

Containing works stretching from the original manuscript to recent works by Dan Graham, Gary Hill and Annelise Strba, the exhibition succeeded in not only developing, for me, a much deeper understanding of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as ‘gesamtkunstwerk’ but also the extent to which this story has become embedded in our consciousness. It introduced me to new ways of looking at works I was already familiar with, and showed me a range of work I had not encountered before. Alice in Wonderland runs at the Tate in Liverpool until 25 January 2012; I can thoroughly recommend it.