May 26-27, 2016
Curatorial Challenges
University of Copenhagen
“Against the Grain of Neutralization. Exhibiting the Ephemeral as a Curatorial Production of Historical Knowledge”
If the curatorial requires new approaches to knowledge mediation, then many argue this should go hand in hand with new forms of reactualizing the artistic potency and inventing curatorial commemoration. In 2011, Italian curator Francesca Bertolotti organized a retrospective of Reiner Ruthenbeck’s work, presented at the Villa Romana in Florence. Ruthenbeck (*1937), a former student of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf, is one of the most recognized German sculptors of his generation. His work spans from conceptual to minimal sculpture, installation, sound, photography and drawing. He uses everyday materials such as cloth, ashes or paper and is interested in contrasting materiality and lightness to produce contemplative or surreal works. The visually haptic materiality is a distinct quality of his work. The exhibition “Dokumentation Reiner Ruthenbeck”, presented his works by projecting them onto the gallery walls. In my paper I want to discuss key aspects of this exhibition project. I will mainly elaborate on the hypothetical question whether such an exhibition is a curatorial gimmick or a feasible way of art mediation through documentation. If the latter applies, the next question that will be discussed is how the projected still image of works of art should be contextualized in terms of its media history, as well as its apparatus and hybrid character. Instead of so-called “historical“, “true“ reconstructions, this exhibition project focused on activating the memory of contemporary spectators not only through presenting these archival documents but also by producing and representing new forms of mediation from historical facts. The paper therefore discusses the conceptually contradictive nature of curatorial subjectivity while creating memories through an exhibition, and the nature of documents to which objectivity is traditionally ascribed. Furthermore, it is striking to see that the artist’s voice has not been integrated in any official discussion, neither in catalogue nor press contexts. The evaluation of the project by the artist himself has been taken into close consideration and been juxtaposed with the concept of the diverse uses of projected documentary images within the exhibition display.
Conference Programme
The exhibition is a primary site of cultural exchange; part spectacle, part socio-historical event, and part structuring device, exhibitions establish and administer meanings of art and cultural heritage. Temporary exhibitions increase in cultural importance, while the traditional role of museums as institutions of Bildung transforms—even museums with well known and established collections follow the call for ever changing exhibitions. Understanding the changing role of curating in this process calls for new research.
As exhibitions gain in importance, so do curatorial strategies: What constitutes the curatorial? What sort of knowledge is produced in and through curatorial strategies? How do curatorial strategies inform museums in contemporary society and what sort of conservative, or perhaps critical and transformative potentials can be traced in exhibition cultures?
The conference invites curators and academics from the interdisciplinary fields of art, cultural history, and museum studies in order to discuss the challenges of curating in contemporary society.
Key topics
• exhibitions as a form of research
• interventions: contemporary artists working with or within museums
• participatory practices and strategies
• curating within the changing roles of museums as Bildung institutions
Confirmed keynote speakers
Donald Preziosi, UCLA
Paul O’Neill, Bard Centre for Curatorial Studies, New York
Tone Hansen, Henie-Onstad Art Center, Oslo
Peter Bjerregaard, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo
Wera Grahn, Linköping University
Simon Sheikh, Goldsmiths, University of London
Research Network for Studies in the Curatorial
Programme
The conference will take place May 26-27 2016 at the University of Copenhagen in auditorium 22.0.11.
Thursday May 26
9:00 – Registration and coffee
9:45 – Welcome: Malene Vest Hansen and Anne Folke Henningsen
Morning session 10:00-12:00
10:00 – Donald Preziosi, UCLA: Curatorship as Bildungsroman
11:00 – Wera Grahn, Linköping University: Intersectionality and Change: Challenges of the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD)
12:00 – Lunch
Afternoon session 13:00-18:00
13:00 – Parallel sessions (see below for full programme)
16:45 – Simon Sheikh, Goldsmiths, University of London: Curating and Research
19:00 – Conference dinner at Admiral Hotel, Toldbodgade 24-28, Copenhagen K (separate registration)
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Friday May 27
9:30 – Coffee
Morning session 10:00-11:00
10:00 – Tone Hansen, Henie-Onstad Art Center, Oslo: The Use Value of Research in the Art Institution
11:15 – Parallel sessions (see below for full programme)
13:00 – Lunch
Afternoon session 14:00-18:00
14:00 – Parallel sessions (see below for full programme)
16:00 – Peter Bjerregaard, Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo: Exhibitions as Research: Curator as….
17:00 – Concluding remarks
17:30 – 22:00 – Canapés, drinks and DJ
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Programme for parallel sessions:
Thursday May 26
13:00-14:30 Parallel sessions I (each session: 3 x 30 min)
Exhibitions as Research I
Moderator: Irene Campolmi
– Marie Laurberg: The Museum as Generator, or: What Can the Single Artist Retrospective Learn from the Topical Exhibition?
– Flavia Frigeri: The Challenges of Research Driven Exhibitions
– Mattias Bäckström: Building Content with Exhibitions – about Essayistic Research
Curating within the Changing Role of Museums as Bildung Institutions I Moderator: Peter Bjerregaard
– Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer: Images as Visual Sources: Representing the Former Danish West Indies
– Jakob Ingemann Parby: Rethinking the Urban History Museum – Challenges and Possibilities in Curating the New Museum of Copenhagen
– Nivi Christensen: The Implied Truth in Curating Greenlandic Art
Participatory Practices and Strategies I
Moderator: Frida Hastrup
– Johan Kjærulff Rasmussen: Mobilizing Participation at the Museum of Copenhagen
– Kirstine Møller: Nuuk Museum: A Case Study on Public Participation in Exhibition Making and Heritage Management
– Mette Boritz: What Matters to Young People? The Case of the White Busses at the National Museum of Copenhagen
***
Thursday May 26
14:45-16:15 Parallel sessions II (each session: 3 x 30 min)
Exhibitions as Research II
Moderator: Masha Chlenova
– Irene Campolmi: The ‘Aesth-Ethics’ of the 21st Century Art Museums. Practices of Ethics through Curatorial Research
– Sabine Dahl Nielsen: Multi-sited Curating as a Critical Mode of Knowledge Production
– Kristian Handberg: Multiple Modernism: New Globalized Framings of the Post War Era in the Recent Exhibitions After Year Zero and The World Goes Pop
Curating within the Changing Role of Museums as Bildung Institutions II
Moderator: Ida Brændholt Lundgaard
– Margareta von Oswald: “Object Biographies“ – Addressing the Challenges Facing Ethnographic Collections in Europe
-Mathias Danbolt: Exhibition Addresses: The Production of Publics in Exhibiting Danish Colonial History
– Ahu Antmen: Curating the Nude in Istanbul: Some Curatorial Challenges
Artistic and Curatorial Interventions I
Moderator: Lotten Gustafsson Reinius
– Trine Friis Sørensen: Commissioning as a Mode of Inquiry
– Livia Dubon: Artists Working with Archives: Old Story, New Participatory Narratives. The Case Study of the Negotiating Amnesia Project in the Alinari’s Archive
– Hanne Hammer Stien: Overcoming the Divide between Art and Cultural History: A Turn towards Photographs and Art within Cultural History Museums
Participatory Practices and Strategies II
Moderator: Camilla Jalving
– Cyril A. Santos: The Lumad Mindanao Exhibition in the National Museum of the Philippines: Encountered Challenges and Negotiations in Curating Ethnographic Collections
– Luise Reitstätter: It’s a Tricky Job. The Profession of Curating and the Problem of Populism
***
Friday May 27
11:15-12:45 Parallel Sessions III (each session: 3 x 30 min)
Exhibitions as Research III
Moderator: Hans Dam Christensen
– Barbara Mahlknecht: Curating the Archive. Feminist Politics, Curatorial Strategies
– Lydie Delahaye: From Archive to Museum
– Susanne Neubauer: Against the Grain of Neutralization: Exhibiting the Ephemeral as a Curatorial Production of Historical Knowledge
Curating within the Changing Role of Museums as Bildung Institutions III
Moderator: Karin Tybjerg
– Marie Riegels: Fashion Curation. Unpacking a New Discipline and Practice
– Katharine Anderson and Jan Hadlaw: Re-imaging the Canada Science and Technology Museum
– Henrik Holm: The Unchangeable Museum?
Artistic and Curatorial Interventions II
Moderator: Sidsel Nelund
– Anne Gregersen: The Artist as Curator: Interventions in Museum Collections
– Lotten Gustafsson Reinius and Robert Willim: Possible Worlds and the Surrealities of Ethnography
– Merete Sanderhoff: Mix it up! Old Collections Inspiring New Creativity and Learning
***
Friday May 27
14:00-15:30 Parallel Sessions IV (each session: 3 or 2 x 30 min)
Exhibitions as Research IV
Moderator: Rasmus Kjærboe
– Nathalia Brichet and Frida Hastrup: Mild Apocalypse. Exhibiting Interdisciplinary Research
– Katarina Stenbeck: Exhibition as Tool
– Karin Tybjerg: Curatorial Strategies for Exhibiting Epistemological Objects
Curating within the Changing Role of Museums as Bildung Institutions IV
Moderator: Kristian Handberg
– Masha Chlenova: Innovative, Polemical, Dogmatic: the Case of Soviet Experimental Museum Displays in 1930-32
– Sidsel Nelund: Congress, Forum, Hearing, Summit – on the Political Complexion of Exhibition Events
– Franziska Brüggmann: Curatorial Challenges – Challenging Institutions. On the Relation between Critical Curating and Gallery Education in Contemporary Art Institutions
Participatory Practices and Strategies III
Moderator: Mathias Danbolt
– Camilla Jalving: Art and Affect – Participative Encounters in the Museum
– Susan Kozel, Maria Engberg, and Temi Odumosu: Living Archives. Artistic Research Approaches to Mixed-Reality Curating
Artistic and Curatorial Interventions III
Moderator: Marie Riegels
– Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn and Michael Barrett: The Archive as Subject: Activism and Subjectivity in the Ethnographic Archive
– Adam Bencard and Louise Whiteley: Curating Gut Feelings – Building an Exhibition about Science in and as Process through Co-curation between Scientists, Artists and Museum Professionals
– Judit Bodor: Exhibition Matters: Curatorial Challenges in Re-producing Ivor Davies’ Adam on St Agnes’ Eve
Please note: The programme is subject to change.