- the Kaldor Public Art projects exhibition at the AGNSW
- a Renaissance city remarkable for its support of women artists (with a segue to the recently released The Countess report on gender representation in the visual arts in Australia)
- the Adam Art Gallery's upcoming 20th anniversary exhibitions
Thursday, 31 October 2019
On the radio, 30 October 2019
Yesterday on RNZ's Nine to Noon programme I talked about:
Sunday, 27 October 2019
Reading list, 27 October 2019
Nathan Mudyi Sentance reviews Natalie Harkin's Archival-Poetics for the Sydney Review of Books: "poet Dr Natalie Harkin (Narungga) knows what many First Nations people know, that official archives are a powerful colonial weapon as well as a site of mourning".
Talia Marshall's River monster: My elusive and charismatic father, for North & South
The Whitewashing of “#WhitePeopleDoingYoga” by Chiraag Bhakta: "My artwork was about appropriation. San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum tried to appropriate it".
Improving records for First Nations collections at the National Library of Australia
Nina Siegal rounds up decolonising efforts in Dutch museums: A Dutch Golden Age? That’s Only Half the Story
Shelley Angelie Saggar's The Decolonial Dictionary
Miriama Aoake's Making sense of Tuia 250 through Barry Barclay’s prescient work for The Spinoff
Karin Chernick for Hyperallergic: How Women Artists Flourished in Northern Italy During the Renaissance
Robin Pogrebin and Zachary Small on the complexities of overhauling NYC's racist and sexist public monuments, for the New York Times: New York’s Race to Build Monuments Runs Into Friction on the Ground
Talia Marshall's River monster: My elusive and charismatic father, for North & South
The Whitewashing of “#WhitePeopleDoingYoga” by Chiraag Bhakta: "My artwork was about appropriation. San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum tried to appropriate it".
Improving records for First Nations collections at the National Library of Australia
Nina Siegal rounds up decolonising efforts in Dutch museums: A Dutch Golden Age? That’s Only Half the Story
Shelley Angelie Saggar's The Decolonial Dictionary
Miriama Aoake's Making sense of Tuia 250 through Barry Barclay’s prescient work for The Spinoff
Karin Chernick for Hyperallergic: How Women Artists Flourished in Northern Italy During the Renaissance
Robin Pogrebin and Zachary Small on the complexities of overhauling NYC's racist and sexist public monuments, for the New York Times: New York’s Race to Build Monuments Runs Into Friction on the Ground
Saturday, 19 October 2019
Reading list, 19 October 2019
I'm at the Anxiety, Culture, Future conference this weekend, so a shorter round-up than normal.
Speaking of anxiety: it's not a condition I live with, but like everyone I get overwhelmed and stressed on occasion. At Te Papa, this happens a bit more than I've been used to previously (I think I feel a deeper sense of urgency and responsibility here than I have in any previous job). I had a really thorough wig-out a couple of Sundays ago, and this advice about working through a stressful leadership patch would have been a helpful intervention at that time.
A run down on accessibility initiatives in art and other museums on Artsy
The science Nobels were announced recently. In their history, only 20 have gone to women. A common argument is that as more women enter science, over time, the percentage of women awarded Nobels will rise - the same lag effect we use to explain, for example, the representation of women artists in pubic art collections. Liselotte Jauffred, an associate physics professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen,and her colleagues used historical data and modeling to find out if the smaller number of women in scientific fields fully accounts for the low number of female Nobel laureates. They called bullshit.
Nesrine Malik reviews the British Museum's Inspired By the East: How the Islamic World Influenced Western Art and Kathryn Hughes reviews the National Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite Sisters (about the women artists, models, makers and managers of the movement) for the Guardian
Lodged last month with the Waitangi Tribunal: WAI292, the Māori Arts Equity and Wellbeing claim
Following on from the large report on women artists, public collections and the secondary art market, Art Agency Partners have released their podcast Why Gender Progress is a Myth
Speaking of anxiety: it's not a condition I live with, but like everyone I get overwhelmed and stressed on occasion. At Te Papa, this happens a bit more than I've been used to previously (I think I feel a deeper sense of urgency and responsibility here than I have in any previous job). I had a really thorough wig-out a couple of Sundays ago, and this advice about working through a stressful leadership patch would have been a helpful intervention at that time.
A run down on accessibility initiatives in art and other museums on Artsy
The science Nobels were announced recently. In their history, only 20 have gone to women. A common argument is that as more women enter science, over time, the percentage of women awarded Nobels will rise - the same lag effect we use to explain, for example, the representation of women artists in pubic art collections. Liselotte Jauffred, an associate physics professor at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen,and her colleagues used historical data and modeling to find out if the smaller number of women in scientific fields fully accounts for the low number of female Nobel laureates. They called bullshit.
Nesrine Malik reviews the British Museum's Inspired By the East: How the Islamic World Influenced Western Art and Kathryn Hughes reviews the National Gallery's Pre-Raphaelite Sisters (about the women artists, models, makers and managers of the movement) for the Guardian
Lodged last month with the Waitangi Tribunal: WAI292, the Māori Arts Equity and Wellbeing claim
Following on from the large report on women artists, public collections and the secondary art market, Art Agency Partners have released their podcast Why Gender Progress is a Myth
Saturday, 12 October 2019
Reading list, 12 October 2019
New Scrutiny of Museum Boards Takes Aim at World of Wealth and Status - yet another report from the New York Times, this time with stats on the 536 trustees of America's 10 most-visited museums, the sources of their wealth
I didn't know that the Victoria & Albert provided career and skill development opportunities for young people as part of its public programme offer. They've just published Let me in: Getting young people into the Creative Industries, a report on the audiences they've serving through these programmes, which they break down into profiles:
In funding:
I didn't know that the Victoria & Albert provided career and skill development opportunities for young people as part of its public programme offer. They've just published Let me in: Getting young people into the Creative Industries, a report on the audiences they've serving through these programmes, which they break down into profiles:
- The Selector: Starting to make decisions that will affect their career path
- The Multifaceted Creative: Talented and interested in more than one field
- The Decided: Chosen a career, looking for relevant opportunities in that field
- The Switcher: Transitioning into a creative career
- The Explorer: Looking for new ideas, spends time critically thinking to form new opinions.
“We as institutions are so trained to treat our temporary exhibition program as the main tent,” said Glenn D. Lowry, MoMA’s director. “And we made the commitment, financially, programmatically and intellectually, that we’re going to shift that. That our main tent is our collection.”"Manchester Museum, which is part of Manchester University, is the first UK institution to return sacred artefacts [to Aboriginal people] under an Australian government-funded project to repatriate items of cultural heritage to mark 250 years since Cook’s voyage in 2020."
In funding:
Saturday, 5 October 2019
Reflecting on Paul Reynolds (1949 - 2010)
A short speech given at the National Library Te Puna Mātauranga on 4 October 2019, when Gareth Seymour was awarded the Paul Reynolds ‘No Numpties’ Award. The award, administered by LIANZA, was set up following Paul’s death in 2010; it has been awarded 5 times, and expires in 2020. The 2019 recipient is Gareth Seymour, of Ngā Taonga.
Paul's blog, People Points, is still alive on the internet. His quizzical face still looks out at you from the top right hand corner of the Blogger template.
In his final blog post, published on 19 May 2010, Paul updated his readers on a lecture series he'd just delivered around the country for the New Zealand Computer Society. He wrote:
The presentation opened with a speculative challenge as to whether we - that's anyone involved in boot-strapping the next phase of the Internet as an open digital public space - are in touch with the historical parallels of the 18th Century Enlightenment and of how the subsequent gold seams of science and technology came about in part, in addition to the long march to democracy, by embedding public education and literacy as a key public good?
Turning to current challenges, my thesis is that the current definition/policy frameworks around open data - especially around government-owned or managed data sets - needs to radically expand to include all the cultural/heritage data assets contained in the myriad of cultural institutions - libraries - galleries - archives - museums, which in turn are one of the great products of, and containers for, the inheritance of the 18th century Enlightenment.
And that, not only were these rich cornucopias of assets and opportunities key ingredients to the development of a 19th and 20th century public literacy, in turn they are key contributors to the development of 21st century digital public space, and its mystic twin - public digital literacy.
Over the previous 18 days of May on his blog - while travelling to present in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland, mind you – he had …
I hope that single extract and that quick list - all from fewer than 20 days in 2010 - will give you, if you didn't have the good fortune of knowing Paul, something of an insight into the breadth of his interests, his erudite and capacious mind, his twinkling curiosity, the role he took as a communicator and connector, and his dedication to causes he felt that would uplift and connect people, allow them to learn the lessons of our histories and make a richer future together.
Paul died on 24 May 2010. Today would have been his 70th birthday.
Preparing for this presentation, I read back over the tributes people posted when news of Paul's shockingly sudden death reached us all - fittingly, largely through the internet channels he himself used. He was remembered for his humour, his emphasis on community access and contributions to knowledge, his work with libraries and the wider GLAMs sector, his passion for collaborative action, for being the best kind of friend and colleague: funny, smart, supportive and challenging.
And a word that got used a lot was "visionary". The older I get the more I realise what a rare and special characteristic this is, and how hard it is to maintain over a lifetime. Experience is a wonderful thing but it has a tendency to narrow you down a bit. Paul was always, always expansive, always asking you to think bigger, be bolder.
That's why I find it so fitting that the No Numpties award was established after Paul's death, donations from National Library, Internet New Zealand, and friends of Paul’s, namely Penny Carnaby, John Truesdale and Sue Sutherland. Sue contacted me in advance of this afternoon - she's very sorry she couldn't make it - and the way she spoke of Paul in her message reminded me what an example that group of friends and colleagues set for me and my group of friends and colleagues: of people excitedly united in a vision of creating benefits for all of Aotearoa by joining the wealth of our collections and taonga, our knowledge and mātauranga, with the communities they all ultimately stem from.
Gareth - congratulations on your award. Very best of luck for your travel to Canada, and your work and connection with First Nations projects there. Paul would have been thrilled to see your nurturing of mātauranga and kaitiakitanga supported through this initiative.
Giving this speech yesterday caused me a lot of reflection. I felt somewhat hypocritical to start with. Paul (along with that whole coterie - him, Penny, Sue, John, the dreamers and doers of a connected and collaborative GLAM sector) was very influential on my early career, those years when I was working at National Library under their leadership. I'd seen Paul around the Library regularly, and had the odd beer with him in Auckland, and was briefly on the National Digital Forum board with him. But I feel like I didn't know know him, not like (I whisper inside my head) not like the grown-ups did. Not like the people who could talk about Paul as a dear friend, who knew him in the round rather than in the faceted way that I did.
And yet. What it also made me reflect on was a thing I've mulled over a lot in the past 5 or 6 years. The National Library environment at the time I was there (2006 to 2010) felt like a golden age: all the best qualities of libraries (the value of connecting people with information and knowledge that benefits their lives in multitudinous ways; the creation, care, and accessibility of collections that reflect Aotearoa New Zealand) being souped up by the digital revolution; the relaxing and expanding effects of Web 2.0, giving collecting institutions a new role in people's lives; the atmosphere of innovation and experimentation driven by Penny Carnaby, who as National Librarian and Chief Executive brought all her knowledge and love of the library sector to the role, and drove the organisation into the future (with much energy, love, and bullheadedness).
It was also a time of real focus on collaboration: EPIC, the Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa, Digital New Zealand, the National Digital Forum. Today tt feels like our cultural institutions (my own included) are so busy keeping our own hamster wheels turning, battling resourcing that feels like it's being chipped away (or just is being chipped away) as costs and expectations rise, that we've lost our collaborative muscle tone.
But, reflecting more: it's just time and priorities, isn't it? And leaders and staff who want to work together, are willing to accept the lag that accompanies collaboration because they see the wider benefits it creates. And people like Paul, who challenge us to think bigger than we currently are. If we can't wait for another catalyst to come along, perhaps we just have to shoulder his mantle ourselves.
* * *
Paul's blog, People Points, is still alive on the internet. His quizzical face still looks out at you from the top right hand corner of the Blogger template.
In his final blog post, published on 19 May 2010, Paul updated his readers on a lecture series he'd just delivered around the country for the New Zealand Computer Society. He wrote:
The presentation opened with a speculative challenge as to whether we - that's anyone involved in boot-strapping the next phase of the Internet as an open digital public space - are in touch with the historical parallels of the 18th Century Enlightenment and of how the subsequent gold seams of science and technology came about in part, in addition to the long march to democracy, by embedding public education and literacy as a key public good?
Turning to current challenges, my thesis is that the current definition/policy frameworks around open data - especially around government-owned or managed data sets - needs to radically expand to include all the cultural/heritage data assets contained in the myriad of cultural institutions - libraries - galleries - archives - museums, which in turn are one of the great products of, and containers for, the inheritance of the 18th century Enlightenment.
And that, not only were these rich cornucopias of assets and opportunities key ingredients to the development of a 19th and 20th century public literacy, in turn they are key contributors to the development of 21st century digital public space, and its mystic twin - public digital literacy.
Over the previous 18 days of May on his blog - while travelling to present in Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland, mind you – he had …
- recapped an appearance on Jim Mora's National Radio programme
- touted the call for papers for the National Digital Forum conference scheduled for November
- written about Tuhoe's settlement under negotiation with the Crown at that time,
- shared a video on the concept of Web 3.0
- referenced Derrida
- shared a campaign to save Middlesex University Philosophy School (Middlesex was his alma mater)
- shared a TED talk
- noted that France had adopted a law change enabling the return of toi moko
- and posted a video of a 2 and a half year-old handling an iPad for the first time.
I hope that single extract and that quick list - all from fewer than 20 days in 2010 - will give you, if you didn't have the good fortune of knowing Paul, something of an insight into the breadth of his interests, his erudite and capacious mind, his twinkling curiosity, the role he took as a communicator and connector, and his dedication to causes he felt that would uplift and connect people, allow them to learn the lessons of our histories and make a richer future together.
Paul died on 24 May 2010. Today would have been his 70th birthday.
Preparing for this presentation, I read back over the tributes people posted when news of Paul's shockingly sudden death reached us all - fittingly, largely through the internet channels he himself used. He was remembered for his humour, his emphasis on community access and contributions to knowledge, his work with libraries and the wider GLAMs sector, his passion for collaborative action, for being the best kind of friend and colleague: funny, smart, supportive and challenging.
And a word that got used a lot was "visionary". The older I get the more I realise what a rare and special characteristic this is, and how hard it is to maintain over a lifetime. Experience is a wonderful thing but it has a tendency to narrow you down a bit. Paul was always, always expansive, always asking you to think bigger, be bolder.
That's why I find it so fitting that the No Numpties award was established after Paul's death, donations from National Library, Internet New Zealand, and friends of Paul’s, namely Penny Carnaby, John Truesdale and Sue Sutherland. Sue contacted me in advance of this afternoon - she's very sorry she couldn't make it - and the way she spoke of Paul in her message reminded me what an example that group of friends and colleagues set for me and my group of friends and colleagues: of people excitedly united in a vision of creating benefits for all of Aotearoa by joining the wealth of our collections and taonga, our knowledge and mātauranga, with the communities they all ultimately stem from.
Gareth - congratulations on your award. Very best of luck for your travel to Canada, and your work and connection with First Nations projects there. Paul would have been thrilled to see your nurturing of mātauranga and kaitiakitanga supported through this initiative.
* * *
Giving this speech yesterday caused me a lot of reflection. I felt somewhat hypocritical to start with. Paul (along with that whole coterie - him, Penny, Sue, John, the dreamers and doers of a connected and collaborative GLAM sector) was very influential on my early career, those years when I was working at National Library under their leadership. I'd seen Paul around the Library regularly, and had the odd beer with him in Auckland, and was briefly on the National Digital Forum board with him. But I feel like I didn't know know him, not like (I whisper inside my head) not like the grown-ups did. Not like the people who could talk about Paul as a dear friend, who knew him in the round rather than in the faceted way that I did.
And yet. What it also made me reflect on was a thing I've mulled over a lot in the past 5 or 6 years. The National Library environment at the time I was there (2006 to 2010) felt like a golden age: all the best qualities of libraries (the value of connecting people with information and knowledge that benefits their lives in multitudinous ways; the creation, care, and accessibility of collections that reflect Aotearoa New Zealand) being souped up by the digital revolution; the relaxing and expanding effects of Web 2.0, giving collecting institutions a new role in people's lives; the atmosphere of innovation and experimentation driven by Penny Carnaby, who as National Librarian and Chief Executive brought all her knowledge and love of the library sector to the role, and drove the organisation into the future (with much energy, love, and bullheadedness).
It was also a time of real focus on collaboration: EPIC, the Aotearoa People's Network Kaharoa, Digital New Zealand, the National Digital Forum. Today tt feels like our cultural institutions (my own included) are so busy keeping our own hamster wheels turning, battling resourcing that feels like it's being chipped away (or just is being chipped away) as costs and expectations rise, that we've lost our collaborative muscle tone.
But, reflecting more: it's just time and priorities, isn't it? And leaders and staff who want to work together, are willing to accept the lag that accompanies collaboration because they see the wider benefits it creates. And people like Paul, who challenge us to think bigger than we currently are. If we can't wait for another catalyst to come along, perhaps we just have to shoulder his mantle ourselves.
Reading list, 5 October 2019
Sometimes an exhibition turns out so much better than the core idea suggests it might. Two reviews (the Guardian, the New York Times) suggest Gossamer, an exhibition at Carl Freedman Gallery in Margate, England, curated by Zoe Bedeaux and including artists from Sarah Lucas to Man Ray to Enam Gbewonyo who have worked in some way with woman's stockings, is one of these shows. (Check out the articles for some extraordinary images.)
Charlotte Burns of Art Agency Partners gives Max Hollein, director of the Met, a good poking on repatriating taonga, the stats on women artists & the market & collections & exhibitions, ethics & governance, and the museum's one billion dollar package of capital projects.
Dropping this here because I'm still working cancel culture out but it's full of useful links: Osita Nwanevu for The New Republic, The “Cancel Culture” Con
And ticketing this one up for value-clashes: Massey University's statement on providing venue hire to a group called Speak Up 4 Women for an event called 'Feminism 2020' that throws the university's commitment to fostering free speech into opposition with its commitment to fostering a campus environment welcoming to all identities.
The latest from the MuseuPunks podcast: Decolonization and its Discontents featuring Sumaya Kassim and Nathan “Mudyi” Sentance.
A request from The Spinoff about gender diversity in exhibition programming circulated around public and private art galleries a couple of months ago - the outcome is Anna Knox's lengthy article Gender bias and art in Aotearoa: a Spinoff survey reveals the harsh reality which ends up focusing on dealer galleries and has some interesting insights / observations (and reveals data is indeed a slippery fish)
Aligned to the proposed re-definition of a museum by ICOM and growing focus on ethical leadership, in the NYT: Shareholder Value Is No Longer Everything, Top C.E.O.s Say:
By me (cough, cough)
Charlotte Burns of Art Agency Partners gives Max Hollein, director of the Met, a good poking on repatriating taonga, the stats on women artists & the market & collections & exhibitions, ethics & governance, and the museum's one billion dollar package of capital projects.
Dropping this here because I'm still working cancel culture out but it's full of useful links: Osita Nwanevu for The New Republic, The “Cancel Culture” Con
And ticketing this one up for value-clashes: Massey University's statement on providing venue hire to a group called Speak Up 4 Women for an event called 'Feminism 2020' that throws the university's commitment to fostering free speech into opposition with its commitment to fostering a campus environment welcoming to all identities.
The latest from the MuseuPunks podcast: Decolonization and its Discontents featuring Sumaya Kassim and Nathan “Mudyi” Sentance.
A request from The Spinoff about gender diversity in exhibition programming circulated around public and private art galleries a couple of months ago - the outcome is Anna Knox's lengthy article Gender bias and art in Aotearoa: a Spinoff survey reveals the harsh reality which ends up focusing on dealer galleries and has some interesting insights / observations (and reveals data is indeed a slippery fish)
Aligned to the proposed re-definition of a museum by ICOM and growing focus on ethical leadership, in the NYT: Shareholder Value Is No Longer Everything, Top C.E.O.s Say:
Breaking with decades of long-held corporate orthodoxy, the Business Roundtable issued a statement on “the purpose of a corporation,” arguing that companies should no longer advance only the interests of shareholders. Instead, the group said, they must also invest in their employees, protect the environment and deal fairly and ethically with their suppliers.Kara Walker takes over the Tate's Turbine Hall
By me (cough, cough)
- On RNZ talking about the Amsterdam Museum's decision to no longer use the phrase 'Golden Age', and the theft of Maurizio Cattelan's golden toilet
- A short speech given to remember Paul Reynolds at the event to celebrate Gareth Seymour's award of the scholarship set up in Paul's name.
Thursday, 3 October 2019
On the radio - October 2019
In my monthly spot on RNZ's Nine to Noon programme, this week I spoke about the Amsterdam Museum's decision to stop using the term 'Golden Age' to describe the 17th century in Holland; and the theft of Maurizio Cattelan's golden toilet America from Blenheim Palace
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