Welcome to the Leeds University Museum Studies Blog. Here you can follow the activities, conversations and debates associated with the University's School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies courses.
We envisage it as an informal space for museum-related discussion, interests & the sharing of ideas.
To join the conversation click the 'Get involved!' tab.
We hope you enjoy it! Rosa and Mark
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!
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!
"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.
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."
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...
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.
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
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).
