Reading list. 22 December 2018

An article this week by my colleague Puawai Cairns for the Center for the Future of Museums blog - Decolonisation: we aren’t going to save you. Puawai also pointed this week to an earlier piece of writing by another of our colleagues, Sean Mallon, which is evergreen: Opinion: why we should beware of the word ‘traditional’.

 Interesting job going at the Pitt Rivers, showing how deliberate and pointed research can be one of a museum's best tools of self-reflection and correction: the Research Associate - Labelling Matters is being recruited for a project to "dissect and dismantle some of the complex contested words, stereotypes and concepts that are present not only in museums but in society at large."

The V&A's Tristram Hunt must have a very active comms rep: here he is for the end of the year in The Art Newspaper, Museums must confront the big issues. Still a million times better than the dickwad bemoaning Kaywin Feldmen's appointment as director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington this week - he doesn't warrant a link.

And some listening for over the holiday break:

Circuit's end of year round-up is a two-parter this year, featuring Mark Amery, Shannon Te Ao, Simon Gennard and Health Galbraith. Part One: personal highlights, trends, best show // Part Two: biggest surprise, best publication, best writing, best moving image work

Suse Anderson of MuseoPunks interviews Christopher Bedford, director of Baltimore's Museum of Art 

Reading list, 15 December 2018

If this year has a theme, it's decolonising museums:

DR Congo to request restitution of works from former coloniser Belgium - The Art Newspaper

Belgium’s Africa Museum Had a Racist Image. Can It Change That? - New York Times

New gallery will be first in a Smithsonian museum to focus on U.S. Latino experience - Washington Post

Senegal unveils China-funded Museum of Black Civilisations - AfricaNews

The Field Museum's Native North American Hall starts to ask who it represents - Chicago Reader

Matariki Williams, Oceania As a Contact Zone, and the Myth of Museum Universalism, The Pantograph Punch

Nicholas Thomas, Should colonial art be returned home? - Financial Times

Reading list, 8 December 2018

How Native Americans in the arts are preserving tradition in a changing world:

“I fell into a trap for 10 years or more of trying to educate the non-Native about what Natives were about,” says Gerald Clarke Jr., a Cahuilla artist known for his large welded sculptures. “It’s a trap because the default setting for mainstream America is that the artist is the ambassador of the community, and that almost replaces the interest in the artist’s own creativity.”

Terrible headline, interesting article - Hey, that's our stuff: Maasai tribespeople tackle Oxford's Pitt Rivers Museum.

Designing for Instagram is fully established as a real thing (to wit - Ollie Wainwright's
Snapping point: how the world’s leading architects fell under the Instagram spell). The NGV have just paired M.C. Escher (perhaps one of the most Instagram-adaptable of artists) with design firm Nendo: MC Escher gets another dimension – and a show that plunges you into his obsessions.

Ticketed for later listening: a Slate podcast interview with exhibition designers Lana Hum and Mack Cole-Edelsack of MoMA’s exhibition design and production department.

A really fascinating read: Revisiting Suck magazine’s experiment in radical feminist pornography.

Excellent fluff: What 8 Collectors Wore to a Fall Art and Design Fair.

Nathalie de Gunzburg
Age: 52
Occupation: chairwoman, Dia Beacon
You’re wearing leather.
Yes, I’m wearing a Hermès black leather dress.
It’s very strong.
Of course.
How do you dress for an event like this?
I don’t know. I like the dress, I had it in my closet. I thought, Why not?
Your shoes: Are they python?
Yes. They’re Aquazzura. All my shoes are. And they’re very comfy.
I don’t believe that. It’s like a four-inch heel.
It’s a full-time job to know how to walk in heels.

It's that time of the year: How Pantone Picked ‘Living Coral’ as the 2019 ‘Color of the Year’.

Reading list, 2 December 2018

Nathan Sentence, who is a project officer in First Nations programming at the Australian Museum, regularly puts out some of the best writing in the sector. Most recently: Diversity means Disruption.

Among the many reactions to Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr's report to President Macron on the repatriation of African artefacts from French museums:

Return of African Artifacts Sets a Tricky Precedent for Europe’s Museums, featuring Hartwig Fischer (British Museum), Hartmut Dorgerloh (Humboldt Forum) and Prince Kum’a Ndumbe III (AfricAvenir International)

Restitution Report: museum directors respond, featuring Tristram Hunt (V&A), Nicholas Thomas (Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge) and Dorgerloh

Legal challenges remain for restituting African artefacts from French museums