Culture Clash? Contemporary arts in historic contexts

Hi everybody
I thought you'd like details of a conference I'm speaking at in February. Below is the official blurb and programme.

Culture Clash? Contemporary arts in historic contexts

Royal Museums Greenwich, London, February 14, 2014

To coincide with the latest in a series of contemporary interventions, 
Yinka Shonibare MBE at Greenwich, Royal Museums Greenwich is hosting a 
one day conference to explore the role of contemporary art outside the 
white cube.
In recent years it has become increasingly popular for museums and 
historic buildings to invite living artists to respond to their 
buildings or collections by curating, creating or performing on site. 
What has been the impact of this popular collaborative trend for 
artists, museums and their audiences?

Themes addressed by the conference include: the artist as curator/the 
curator as artist; contemporary art, memory and commemoration; the 
relationship between artists, museums and the market; artists’ 
residencies and audience engagement.

Programme

09.00–09.50: Registration and refreshments

10.00–11.30: Session 1: Approaches and Challenges

New Visions of the Sea: Assessing the Legacy of Contemporary Art at the 
National Maritime Museum, 1999–2009
Helen Hillyard, National Gallery

The Challenges Faced by Local Authority-Managed Museums and Settings
Julien Parsons and Martin Thomas and, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, 
Exeter

Contemporary Arts, Historic Contexts… and the Law
Dr Antoinette Maget Dominicé, University of Lucerne

11.30–12.00: Coffee and tea break

12.00–13.00: Session 2: Interpreting and Animating Sites and Collections

Talking Back: Artists Working with Natural History Collections from 
Australia, China and India
Bergit Arends, independent curator

The Haunting of a Shrine: Contemporary Art at the Brontë Parsonage 
Museum
Nick Cass, University of Leeds

13.00–14.00: Lunch

14.00–15.30: Session 3: Collaboration, Dialogue and (Mis)Understanding
Disturbing the Comfortable
Melissa Hamnett, V&A

How Do We See Each Other? Dialogue and Exchange in Native American 
Curatorial Methodologies
Helen Shaw, University of York

Playing with the Past
Jonathan Carson and Rosie Miller, Carson & Miller

15.30–15.45: Break

15.45–16.45: Keynote: to be confirmed

17.00–19.00: Reception and curator tour of Yinka Shonibare MBE at 
Greenwich in the Queen’s House

The fee is £50 (concessions £40) and includes lunch and refreshments. 
For more information and booking form please contact research@rmg.co.uk 
or call 020 8312 6716 or visit www.rmg.co.uk/researchers/conferences

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.

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.

Temple Works, Leeds...Heritage 'in' Practice

Hello All,

Rebecca and I went on an organised visit to Temple Works in Leeds last week, to see the fabulous range of creative activities going on there...Susan Williamson, creative director at Temple Works, has assembled a huge range of creative practitioners as part of a Social Enterprise project...

Temple Works, Leeds

The building, as some of you may know, is undergoing a massive stabilisation, conservation and restoration project...but is was fantastic to see how imaginatively those actively involved in the processes of using the spaces are.....we saw everything from stained-glass making, to impromptu action theatre, to model railway enthusiasts!

Impromptu active theatre at TW

...one of the highlights of the tour by Susan was being able to go out on the roof of Temple Works...it's quite a sight...as you can see!

Roof at TW

 ......at the conclusion of the tour, we were invited into the main space at Temple Works...one of the largest covered rooms in the world at the time of it's completion in the 1840s.....it was a treat to see the space...and to hear how amazing the acoustics were!

Music performance at TW

...the experience was rounded off with a barbecue...with wonderful Yorkshire sausages!....

This really is a model for how a grade I listed heritage monument can be literally brought to life!
Mark

Heritage Reading Group

I've just posted the next text for the Heritage Reading Group on the Reading Group's blog.

You can check it out here:

Heritage Reading Group

The meeting is on 7 March at 2.30 in the Student Common Room in the  Old Mining Building

It would be great to see you there!

Nick

Reading Armley- The Industrial Museum.

The Level 2 HAMS group visited the Industrial Museum at Armley on Wednesday. Nick Cass set us three themes to consider; encouraging visitor interest, 'good' historical interpretation, and work processes, worker's lives and the social structure of the workplace; all this leading to a future discussion.

Heritage Experiences - down t'pit

Hello All,

I attended a meeting yesterday, as part of a new research project called 'Performing the Past: Exploring the Heritage of Working-Class Communities in Yorkshire' at the National Coal Mining Museum for England

Performing the Past is part of a White Rose University Consortium funded project...and more on that in future blog entries I'm sure!

National Coal Mining Museum for England, Wakefield.

  Anyway, I had a really (no, really) fantastic heritage experience; a group of us went on the 'underground tour' of the redundant mine (redundant in the sense of producing coal, I mean...it's actually far from 'redundant' in many other ways!).....it has a kind of after-life...

The Underground Tour at NCMM 

The guide for our 'heritage' experience was an ex-miner, as all the guides for the underground tours are, and what a fabulous heritage experience guide he was!..The picture (left) is not us btw...we are much, much older...plus, we were not allowed to take any cameras (or anything with batteries etc) down the mine (so I don't know how this particular photo was taken?), but it's interesting that the health and safety working practices of the mine still continue.....

But, to the Tour - our guide took us underground (c.500 feet...to the height of the Blackpool Tower apparently) and through mining history, from late 18th century to the 1980s (when the mine was closed...See Orgreave if you're interested...which I see is back in the news again...significantly.)
It was a sublime experience, full of detail, pathos, humour and just the right amount of violence (call it anger) (if there can be 'just the right amount' of violence...maybe I'm thinking Zizek here?). The labyrinthine spaces of the mine were literally and brilliantly brought to life by our Ex-Miner...he was, in the immortal words of Bowie, 'Chameleon, Comedian, Corinthian and Caricature'!
(D.Bowie; The Bewlay Brothers, 1971)
Mark.

Sunny Bank Mills Heritage Open Day.

Sunny Bank Mills Heritage Open Day.

This event took place just yards from my home ( Not Mark's!) on the heritage open weekend. The place was formally introduced to the visitor but created a very special occasion for local former mill-workers who were able to re-enter the site after many years.  The mill reminds me very much of a scaled down version of Jonathan Silver's Salt's Mill in its early years, and the owner's, who are the seventh generation of the founder, are keen to follow this amalgam of Industry, the Arts, Commerce, and Heritage. An excellent Art Exhibition filled one superbly restored area, and many folk left feeling that it would be great to be involved with all the positivity and ambition on parade.

 

Woodbine.

Sunny Bank Mills Heritage Open Day

Sunny Bank Mills is just a few yards from my home in Farsley and will be open under the heritage open day scheme on the 7/8th. Sept. An art exhibition entitled 'Five Northern Artists' is part of the occasion as well, though this remains open on the Sunday. Details are here:
www.sunnybankmills.co.uk/events.php

Heritage Spaces in South African 'Museums'

Hello All,

I had a really interesting (I think?) heritage experience in Cape Town, whilst I was staying in Stellenbosch for the World Economic History Congress at the University of Stellenbosch.  A heritage 'space' left as an open monument in Cape Town - District 6 - where the black population was forcibly removed in the 1970s during the apartheid regime.

District 6 - the empty spaces left after the clearance of the black inhabitants

District 6 Memorial Plaque

I thought that the empty spaces were a potent signifier for the traumatic events, when the homes of over 60,000 inhabitants were bulldozed. There is a commemorative plaque to the events - 

It felt a bit like an upside down archaeological site; instead of digging to recover the history, you could 'see' the history in the layers above the ground - intangible-tangible heritage.........it was actually quite moving to see these undeveloped spaces.  I understand that there are some plans to rebuild, but I think they should leave it as a memorial as a reminder of the events....

There is a District 6 Museum too, and I did actually try to visit it, but it seemed to be closed...or at least no-one answered the buzzer on the door.  Anyway, I enjoyed the empty spaces of District 6, but wondered if it needed a little more 'interpretation'....but maybe the local memory should be enough?

Mark

Leeds 'Character Area' Kirkgate Regeneration

There have recently been some interesting developments towards the regeneration of an area of Leeds city centre. The Lower Kirkgate Townscape Heritage Initiative Scheme has defined a 'character area' that includes Kirkstall Market, the Corn Exchange, the First and Third White Cloth Halls, the Assembly Rooms and St Peter's Parish Church. Some preliminary work has already begun with the demolition of the later infill and west wing of the First White Cloth Hall [see below]. There seems to be a plan to reconstruct the building with some materials conserved from the damaged areas, although it remains unclear to what purpose.

The Kirkgate Character Area Management Plan is a particularly interesting read [it really is - to me at least!], as a document that necessarily has to negotiate historical research, the disparate interests of cultural and commercial stakeholders and the bureaucratic apparatus of local government. The online public consultation is open until 20 May.

New Design Template...a new Blog-o-sphere

The Blog has been a bit quiet lately, with only the valiant efforts of Rebecca to keep the lamp burning...(Thanks Rebecca!)....I've been a little bit preoccupied, writing some stuff I'm supposed to be delivering soon...(more anon.).
But anyway, I thought, in order to breath some more life into the embers I'd redesign the webpage...(well, it's more of a pret-a-webpage, rather than me actually fiddling about with photo-shop...and that comment demonstrates that I'm really not up-to-date with these techy things.....)...so what do you think?...or should we go back to the old design?

Anyway...thanks Rebecca for a really provocative post...and you're right, these 'traditional' museum displays are quite romantic...(in a positive sense, I mean....as in the poetics of history....)..and are part of the heritage of museum displays..maybe there should be a new body to protect museums from being re-displayed?....maybe we should develop a Grading for Museums...as they do for Architecture etc...?

More blogging to come...
Mark

Science & Heritage Talks

Hello All,

you are warmly invited to our 'Science & Heritage' talk at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds on WEDNESDAY 26th May at 6.00pm - wine and nibbles afterwards!

'Metrology as an Investigative Tool'

Liam Blundt

School of Computing and Engineering

University of Huddersfield

ALL WELCOME

These talks are supported by a Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) and the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, and the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage at the University of Leeds.

Museum & Heritage Technology Seminars

Hi all,
the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage at the University of Leeds is hosting a series of Networking Events as part of a successful Higher Education Innovation Fund application. The events take place at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at the University at 6.00pm and you are very welcome to come along, they last about 1 hour (45 min lecture and time for discussion...followed by drinks and nibbles)...hope to see you there!

Wednesday 24th February 2010 at 6.00pm - Professor Robert Cywinski (Applied Sciences, University of Huddersfield) 'Neutrons, Nuclear Reactors, Particle Accelerators....and Museums'

Wednesday 3rd March 2010 at 6.00pm - Dr Martin Cooper (Conservation Technology Lab, National Museums Liverpool) '3D Scanning of Cultural heritage: experiences at National Museums'

More to come...keep your eye on the Blog...

Mark

Manchester MA Field Trip

Hello All,

our semester 1 visit to Manchester took place last week, and (I think) we had an interesting time...although I forgot how long the walk was from the tram stop to the Imperial War Museum North (and I forgot it was November!)...but anyway, apart from also taking in Urbis and Manchester City Art Gallery....(here are the students in the entrance hall).....we also considered the City of Manchester itself as a 'Museum'; rather sadly, my 'surprise' visit on the tour of Manchester as a city of Radicalism (the site of the Peterloo Massacre/Women's Suffrage/Birth of Marxism)..........(here's the commemorative
plaque marking the site of Peterloo)................was somewhat ironically usurped by the face of modern consumerism in the guise of a 20 foot high Santa on Manchester Town Hall, (and which the student's thought was the 'surprise'....which surprised me!)
......one could say, (if one adopted a Scrooge-like position) that one is a signifier of resistance (albeit now somewhat denuded of its power through its 'heritization'), the other a potent signifier of blissful apathy.....but then that would be just be churlish!

Anyway, 'holidays are coming, holidays are coming' (irony)
Mark

Heritage-a-vision

There's a new BBC/Open University series staring this evening called Saving Britain's Past. It's going to be tracing changing attitudes to conservation and the development of the heritage industry. It sounds like it's taking a thematic approach, it's 'The City' tonight. Might be interesting?

It's in seven parts, Mondays, 7.30pm on BBC2.