Reading list for 2 April 2016

Judith H. Dobrzynski is outraged by the Indianapolis Museum of Art doing online market research (similar to surveys Te Papa regularly undertakes) about potential future exhibitions. over market research. A local journalist follows up with the IMA, where staff talk about 'guest satisfaction' (the museum has recently re-introduced charged entry and limited free access to its extensive grounds). In case we're worried she's a fuddy-duddy, Dobrzynski points to an online survey being run by the RA in London that she can get behind.

"this exercise of discretion ... reasserts his status as a radical". Holland Cotter in the NYT on the current Robert Mapplethorpe shows at LACMA and The Getty.

Hilarie M. Sheets in the NYT on The Resurgence of Women-Only Art Shows. American art critic Tyler Green responded on Twitter that a focus on woman-only shows removes female artists from the wider context of contemporary practice and of art history, and pointed to this 2015 podcast (which is lined up for my weekend listening).

Scouring the Internet for something subversive to cover for our “arty dirtbag” readership, I happened across a newly-published coffee table book, 1968: Radical Italian Design, which collected photos of a number of garish pieces of impractical-looking furniture. Since strange furniture always gets the clicks, the book made for a perfect post. It was doubly improved by the fact that the furniture in question was so unequivocally terrible.

So hard to tell if this is satire: The Declining Taste of the Global Super-Rich.

And also part of the so-hard-to-tell files: "Using a unique auction dataset from artinfo.com, we find that narcissism measured by the signatures of artists is positively associated with the market performance of artworks." The Art of Narcissists Earns More at Auction, Researchers Claim.

Reading list for 26 March 2016

If you read one thing this weekend, make it Tara Robertson's 'Digitization: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should', on putting copies On Our Backs, a lesbian porn magazine published between 1984 and 2000, online. A thoughtful and well-researched examination of the consideration that should be undertaken when putting material made in non-internet eras or cultures online.

An even-handed review in Nature by David Hurst Thomas, archaeologist and anthropology curator at the American Museum of Natural History, of Tiffany Jenkins' Keeping Their Marbles on museum repatriation and Samuel Redman's Bone Rooms, on the collecting and display of human remains.

A throwback, but new to me: David Osa Amadasun on his outreach work, '“Black people don’t go to galleries” – The reproduction of taste and cultural value'.

Simon Denny features in a lengthy article in the Guardian by Hannah Ellis-Petersen, about what the Generation Y avant garde might look like.

Though celebratory in spirit, ‘ “Revolution” raises difficult questions, as “Wack!” did, one being whether all-women shows, unless driven by strategic necessity or shaped around an incisive theme, are a healthy idea. Do such roundups — several are scheduled at American museums in the year ahead — help correct the gender inequity of the art world, which is very real (look at auction figures and exhibition schedules), or perpetuate it? Do they give women a visibility that will lead to their full integration into the larger art system? Or do they position them forever as outsiders, separate but, in terms of rewards, unequal?

'Are all-women shows good or bad for art?' - Holland Cotter in the New York Times on Hauser Wirth & Schimmel's opening exhibition, Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women, 1947-2016.

NPR will not explicitly promote its own podcasts, or their NPR One podcast player, in broadcasts in deference to local stations with whom it has a distribution agreement. Reminds me of the way newspapers will still cite a website or webpage in a piece of coverage online, but not hyperlink it.

My own long-weekend reading; the first Culture white paper from the British government since 1965. (link is a PDF).

Broadsheet 110, June 1983: 'Special feature on feminist art'

Broadsheet Issue 110, June 1983

Special feature on feminist art | Pakeha women respond to Maori sovereignty

Cover: Claudia Pond Eyley

Juliet Batten was asked to write an article about New Zealand feminist artists; she had recently returned from a trip to America and was interested in the differences she saw between American and New Zealand women artists.

“In America the term “feminist artist” didn’t appear to be a loaded one, it was freely used, apparently without difficulty. In New Zealand the term seemed fraught with danger. It aroused fear, confusion and distate on the part of women artists. I suspected it wasn’t simply a matter of disliking lables per se. It seemed to be a matter of this particular combination of labels. Like oil and water, art and politcs don’t mix – or so we have been indoctinated to believe. Despite the “personal is political” stand of the women’s movement, most women artists still seem to believe feminism and art are indeed like water and oil.”

Batten described a gendered double standard: while Ralph Hotere could show work critical of development at Aramoana, Pat Hanly show anti-nuclear paintings, and Don Binney show work protesting environmental destruction,

“To be a declared feminist artist is to sign one’s death warrant as far as the art establishment is concerned: this at least is the fear. When we note what misogynists hold the power in the art world (witness the anti-woman line of Art New Zealand) the fear becomes understandable.”

Rather than write a definitive article assigning women artists as feminists, Batten decided to send two questions to 35 artists ‘whose work might suggest a feminist perspective’:

1. When you use the term ‘feminist artists’ for yourself, what do you mean by it?
2. Was there a turning point for you when you suddenly began to define yourself in this way? When did it happen, and what were the important factors leading to the change?

18 artists replied, (‘of these, 13 accepted the label “feminist artist”’) and Batten also interviewed Hariata Ropata.

Batten broke the responses into four categories:

A group of two women in their early 50s, Jacqueline Fahey and Vivienne Lynn. ‘Each tells of her struggle to find her direction before the days of the women’s movement. Each produced what might be now understood as feminist work. … For both these women, the definition “feminist” is primarily one that gives permission to draw on the content of their own lives, to identify the “problem without a name”. It also means bringing a political consciousness to bear on this material.’

A group of women mainly in their late 30s or early 40s ‘whose responses show a lack of clarity or even avoidance of question 1. This may reflect the fact that artists do not necessarily express themselves easily in words. It may also indicate fear, or isolation. One woman came up with an answer for Question 1 only after being prompted, and said she feared writing anything the art establishment might use against her.’

A group who ‘finds no problem fusing the terms feminist and artist. … This is also my own position’.

A group for whom ‘there is an assumption that a feminist artist is one who produces only political work’.

Contributors:

Jacqueline Fahey

Claudia Pond-Eyley

Di Ffrench

Carole Shepheard

Hariata May Ropata

Jane Zusters

Juliet Batten

Barbara Strathdee

Anna Heinz

Anna Keir

Janet de Wagt

Jill Carter-Hansen

Stephanie Sheehan

Vivienne Lynn

Each contribution includes the responses to the two questions, brief biographical information, and the reproduction of two works.

(While Batten notes 18 respondents, only 14 artists – including herself – are featured.)

The section in the magazine opened with a black and white image of a Jacqueline Fahey work, No. 11 (painted 1958, destroyed 1962).

“This series of paintings started in 1959 were the result of my first brush with suburbia. The touching vulnerability of these cloistered women. There are no bars on the windows but there might as well be. In their isolation they have fallen back on magic. Hand reading, interpreting tea-leaves and the signs and portents – the omen at the window.” Jacqueline Fahey destroyed this and others in the same series of paintings after they were turned down for exhibition at the Barry Lett (now RKS) Gallery.

Antic 1986 - 1990: full list of contents

Antic was a magazine of literary and visual arts criticism and discussion published between 1986 and 1990. There were seven issues in total; the editors were Susan Davis, Elizabeth Eastmond and Priscilla Pitts originally; Tina Barton joined as an editor from the fourth issues; and Elizabeth Eastmond stepped down after the fourth issue. Laurence Simmons guest edited the seventh and final issue.

This statement was published in the first issue:

The idea for this magazine was first floated at the ANZART Feminist Art Seminar in May 1985. Concern at the general lack of a forum for critical discussion, especially in the visual arts, was voiced frequently during the weekend seminar. We were also aware that And was shortly due to publish its last issue.

A chance meeting at a pre-Festival screening of No Time for Tears led to a further discussion: we decided to put out a limited issue magazine ourselves.

Antic is exploring issues in critical practice, theory, and related work in fiction; encouraging dialogue between disparate disciplines, approaches and texts.

Antic hopes to foreground aspects of a growing body of work dealing with recent directions in feminist and other theoretical practices often ignored by existing art publications in New Zealand.

Page art is an integral aspect of the magazine.

Below is the entire contents list for Antic. Article abstracts, where available, have come from the Index New Zealand website. an invaluable record of New Zealand's journal and magazine publishing history.

* * *

Antic 1
June 1986

Editors Susan Davis, Elizabeth Eastmond and Priscilla Pitts

Copyright reverts to authors on publication

Published with assistance from The Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand and The New Zealand Literary Fund

Price: $8

Cover: Jenny Dolezel

Contents

Julie Ewington
Past the Post: Postmodernism and Postfeminism
5-21

Merylyn Tweedie
The woman
22

Dawn Danby
The Power of The Word
34-43

Ngahuia te Awekotuku in conversation with Elizabeth Eastmond and Priscilla Pitts
44-55

Maria Olsen
Drawings
56-58

Anne Maxwell
Poststructuralist and Feminist Literary Theories: The Problematic Relation
59-72

Francis Pound
Nationalist Antitheses: A Compendium
73-84

John Hurrell
Driving on two wheels down a one-way street
85-86

Lita Barrie
Remissions: Toward a Deconstruction of Phallic Univocality
87- 104

Altared Positions: A Conversation between Stuart Morgan and Lita Barrie
105-113

Roger Horrocks
‘Reading’ and ‘Gender’ – Watching Them Change
114-128

Susan Davis and Margaret Maxwell
Silence and Animosity: Futures in the Gender Debate
129-138

Denys Watkins
They have their families their leisure they know what to do with their lives
139

* * *

Antic 2

March 1987

Price: $9.50

Editors Susan Davis, Elizabeth Eastmond and Priscilla Pitts

Copyright reverts to authors on publication

Antic is published with assistance from The Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand

Cover: Megan Jenkinson

Contents

Juliet Batten
The Edmonds Cookbook and the Ivory Tower
5-17
Responds to 'Remissions', an article by Lita Barrie (Antic, 1) about feminist artists and critics. Examines the relationship of theorist to artist, and the question of the artist's audience. Discusses the treatment by critics of female sexual imagery in feminist art, and the response of artists to criticism. Looks at the problem of criticism becoming prescriptive or proscriptive rather than descriptive.

Lita Barrie
Further Toward a Deconstruction of Phallic Univocality: Deferrals
18-47
Considers the re-presentation by Lacan of the theory of Freud on women. Analyses academic French feminism since 1968, especially the work of Julia Kristeva, Helene Cixous, and Luce Irigaray. Discusses the nature and methods of feminist art criticism. Examines the work of artist Christine Hellyar. Comments on artists Mary Kelly, Claudia Pond-Eyley, Marte Szirmay, Barbara Kruger, Merylyn Tweedie, Pauline Rhodes, and Jacqueline Fraser.

B.A. Smith
History
48

Adrian Hart
3 Figures
49-55

Anita Segerberg
Puzzleheaded Girls
56-63
Using 'The puzzleheaded girl', a story by Christina Stead, as a starting point, this essay aims to establish the puzzleheaded girl as a type. Considers some of the ways in which this type is represented in film and literature, and discusses female heroes. Looks at 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' by Truman Capote and 'Play it as it lays' by Joan Didion in both book and film versions. Comments on the films 'Desperately seeking Susan', 'Plenty', and ' Vagabonde'.

Christine Webster
A Woman. A Place
64-67

Rod Barnett
House and Garden: A Discourse of Landscape in New Zealand
68-83
Considers conscious attempts to inscribe culture on the land, making the artefacts we have come to call gardens. Looks at these inscriptions as a matter of mythologies which move in and through their societies. This paper looks at one myth (Nature) and its effect on a discipline. The discipline is a number of affiliated activities which find their locus in the creation of landscapes and environments for people.

Christine Hellyar
Landscape Sculpture
84-85

Ian Carter
Death from a (Formerly) Tenured Position
86-96
Looks at the origins and structure of the university system. Analyses and compares British and NZ university novels. Considers the novels of Kingsley Amis, Malcolm Bradbury, David Lodge, M. K. Joseph, Dan Davin and C. K. Stead.

B.A. Smith
Uniforms
97

Lita Barrie
The Simulated Thrust: A Discussion of ‘Wild, Visionary, Spectral: New German Art’
98-110
Discusses this exhibition of the work of thirteen German men artists. Considers the deconstruction by Hal Foster of German neo-expressionism. Questions the absence of women artists in the exhibition. Looks at the work of contemporary German feminist artists.

Robert Leonard
The Adventure That Never Was
111-119
Replies to a paper by Francis Pound, 'Modernism hyphen post hyphen modernism'. Analyses Pound's theories of NZ nationalist art history. Discusses his rejection of the 'hard light' theory as fetishism and argues that Pound is himself guilty of fetishism.

Georgina Murray
‘Peace’ and Meaning
120-135
Looks at definitions of peace, peace consciousness and practice. Explores how the ideological form of art reflects the present moment of peace consciousness. Considers the work of Nigel Brown, Andrew Drummond, Scratch and John Nicol.

Jill Studd
Garuda Crosses the Potomac
136-137

Jill Studd
Garuda Over Mont-Saint Michel
138

Derek Schulz
Savage Love 9
139-141

* * *

Antic 3

November 1987

Price: $9.50

Editors Susan Davis, Elizabeth Eastmond and Priscilla Pitts

Copyright reverts to authors on publication

Antic is published with assistance from The Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand

Cover: John Reynolds

Contents

Anna Neill
French Romance
5-9

Robert Leonard
Just as Revolutionary
10-19
Considers the deployment of ambivalence in advertising. Discusses the citation of radical politics to create positive associations around advertised commodities. Considers the pocket computer PSION ad and the Apple logo. Quotes A. R. D. Fairburn.

Richard Killeen
History of Destruction
20

Richard Killeen
Organic fourness
21

Richard Killeen
From the ashes
22

Anne Maxwell
Reading ‘the bone people’: Toward a Literary Postcolonial National Discourse
23-45
Considers independent nationalism in peripheral nations. Examines the ability of the discourse of 'The bone people' to resist cultural imperialisms, and to give political voice to an emerging concept of nation. Discusses a unified NZ cultural identity, cultural appropriation and modernism. Compares 'Living in the Maniototo' by Janet Frame, 'The heart of darkness' by Conrad and 'The waste land' by Eliot.

Billy Apple
Addendum to ‘Subtraction’: The Given as an Art-Political Statement
46-47

Stephen Davies
The Marriage of Susanna
48-51
Comments on 'The marriage of Figaro' by Mozart. Considers the character of Susanna as deliberately proto-feminist, and discusses her role in the opera and its title.

Donald Bassett
Third Empire? Variation on a Nineteenth Century Theme in New Zealand Postmodern Architecture
52-68
Comments on French motifs and roof types. Discusses the Skyline Restaurant, the Wellington Club, the Chateau Regency Hotel and the Parnell 'La Maison de distinction' townhouses. Mentions Peter Beaven, Roger Walker and Ian Athfield.

Sarah Treadwell
Disturbances: The Architecture of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs – Description of an Architectural Study
Criticises the narrow roles assigned to women students at the School of Architecture. Describes a study by 21 women and 14 men students at the University of Auckland. Uses feminist postmodern theory to relate the tradition of architecture to women. Studies Wellington Government Centre buildings, including the Beehive. Outlines proposals by Justin Marler, Jenny Cook, Tonia Williams, Jane Baldwin, Michael Pepper, Craig Moller, Linley Hindmarsh, and Annette Jones.

Julia Morison
Accessories for a Soft Machine II
89-92

Alex Calder
The Closure of Sense: Janet Frame, Language and the Body
93-104
Relates sense to nonsense in the closure of 'State of siege'. Explores the textual unconscious. Discusses 'Jabberwocky' in 'Through the looking glass' by Lewis Carroll. Considers interpretations by Humpty Dumpty, and Antonin Artaud. Looks at how Artaud rewrote the poem. Refers to schizophrenia.

Richard Killeen
Organic House
105

Plastic is Leather, Fuck You: Chris Kraus talks to ANTIC
106-115
Quotes from 'Foolproof illusions' and 'How to shoot a crime'. Mentions Paul and Denise Maunder. Discusses Mabou Mines, and exploitation of women.

Roger Blackley
The Exhibitions of Maori Art in Auckland 1884-1885: Documents of the New Zealand Art Students Association
116-122
Quotes from a speech by Kennett Watkings. Discusses Maori art and its relationship to Pakeha artists. Relates Watkins' comments to the appropriation of a specifically NZ tradition, and contemporary genocidal discourse.

City Group
Deconstruction in Camera. First Part: Helmar Lerski 1871-1956
123-139
Features the Verwandlungen durch Licht (Metamorphosis through light) exhibition of photographs of Mr Uschatz. Includes translations of criticisms. Considers the portrait as gaining meaning through the movement of inner life as reflected in a given expression.

Juliet Batten
A Question of Gender, a Question of Audience
140

Heather McPherson
Letter
141-142

Wystan Curnow
Landscape and the Body
143-163
Discusses expressive realism and cultural nationalism. Considers that photography has fetishised landscape and the body, draining the potency of their metaphorical conjunction. Explores the female embodiment of the land and the phallic vision, of expressive realist ideology. Suggests that women are excluded from NZ national identity.

* * * 

Antic 4

October 1988

Price: $9.50

Editors Tina Barton, Susan Davis, Elizabeth Eastmond and Priscilla Pitts

Copyright reverts to authors on publication

Antic is published with assistance from The Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand

Cover: Judy Darragh

Contents

Fiona Makea Pardington
They’re Lucky in Sweden
1-3

Roger Horrocks
Re-Locating New Zealand
4-14
Letters from London and New York. Focuses on English and American perceptions of NZ, cultural identity, and the relationship of the arts to society.

Jane Zusters
Self Portrait Refusing to Provide Interpretation
15

Andrew Bogle and Denys Watkins
Immendorff in Auckland – an interview
16-30
Jorg Immendorf talks about painting, radicality, Duchamp, Picasso, Penck, Lupertz and Kiefer.

Merle Hallahan
Knitting Pattern
31-34

Stephen Davies
The Marriage of Susanna
35-37
Examines the characterisation of Susanna in 'The Marriage of Figaro' by Mozart. Considers why her importance is often overlooked in favour of the master/servant relationship between Figaro and Count Almaviva.

Laurence Simmons
‘Tracing the Self’: The Self-Portraits of Rita Angus
38-52
Considers the relationship of the 'painting self' and the 'painted self' in self-portraiture. Discusses some of the fifty-five known self-portraits of Rita Angus using the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan. Focuses on four paintings, dated 1929, 1936-7, 1960-1 and 1966.

You Must Be Barbara Kruger! – an interview (Merylyn Tweedie, Priscilla Pitts, Robert Leonard)
52-64

A Project for Antic by Ralph Paine
65-70

Down Under Deconstruction: An interview with David Wills
71-81
Discusses the writings of Jacques Derrida and their acceptance by academic institutions in France, America and Australia. Considers the political effects of deconstruction on teaching institutions and teachers. Mentions Sarah Kofman, Jane Gallop and Irigaray. Comments on the relationship between psychoanalysis and French feminism.

Sarah Shieff
Reading Gertrude Stein: The Rejection of Closure
82-98
 'Melanctha, Or Each One As She May' is the central novella in Stein's collection Three Lives, first published in 1909. It is one of her earliest-published works. The story chronicles the life of Melanctha Herbert, a 'subtle, intelligent, attractive, half-white girl', whose curiosity and wandering ways lead her through variously unfulfilling relationships, always in search of an elusive and ill-defined 'wisdom'. This essay is in five main sections. The introductory section is a collage of voices relating to the creation of 'Melanctha'. Sources are included at the end of each fragment. Within each of the two following sections, 'Rejecting Closure' and 'Wandering', the main axis within each of the parallel strips is generally vertical. Horizontal, 'across-the page' readings form a secondary axis.

Derrick Cherrie
New Physics
99-108

Nick Perry
Am I Rite? And Am I Write? Or Am I Right? Decoding the Singing Detective
109-118
A textual analysis and cultural interpretation of the British television series. Considers the varying emphases of television criticism. Mentions Camille Guy, Clive James, Marshall McLuhan, Kenneth Tynan and George Bernard Shaw. Examines cultural differences between British and American film and television drama as expressions of high culture / popular culture. Mentions George Orwell, Raymond Chandler and Dilys Powell.

Jane Zusters
K. Road Boys
119

Rebecca Tansley
Psycho and Fatal Attraction: Gender Transgression, Feminine Dread and the Mother
120-129
A feminist critique of 'Fatal attraction', a film by Adrian Lyne. Discusses its debt to 'Psycho' by Alfred Hitchcock. Compares the treatment of the principal female characters in terms of the changes in social mores in the intervening period.

Sigrid Jottkandt
‘Oh Bondage Up Yours’ Punk Rock: Towards Feminist Solutions
130-142
Examines the implications inherent in the responses of women to the punk subculture in Britain in the late 1970s. Discusses the increased participation of women in music. Focuses on a female punk rock band, 'The Slits'. Analyses punk images of male and female sexual identity. Argues that punk permitted a liberation for women from certain kinds of sexist behaviour.

Merylyn Tweedie
Dore re-constructs a debate about the vaginal vs. the clitoral
143-159

Contributors

* * * 

Antic 5

June 1989

Price: $9.50

Editors Tina Barton, Susan Davis and Priscilla Pitts

Copyright reverts to authors on publication

Antic is published with assistance from The Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand

Cover: Patrick Reynolds

Contents

Ngahuia te Awekotuku
Towards 1990
1-3
Discusses whether Maori have anything to celebrate at NZ's sesquicentenary.

Camille Guy
A ‘Women’s Book’: Is there such a thing?
4-6
Argues that the term woman does not describe a homogeneous group. Questions assumptions about women's reading reflected in the choice of books at the 1988 Women's Book Festival.

Graham Ley
Saturday Night or Sunday Morning?
7-9

Rebecca Tansley
Feminity From Folklore to Film
10-16
Contrasts attitudes to accepted norms of womanly behaviour in 'Little Red Riding Hood' and the film 'Vigil'.

John Nixon
Special Project for Antic
1 Flower
2 Ode to the Epic
3 Untitled Photograph (Russian Porcelain)
4 Cross
5 Manifesto
6 Proposal for Schloss Herrnsheim, Worms, West Germany
17-23

Gary Sangster
NZXI: Positions
24-30
Considers the functions of exhibitions. Backgrounds the development of an Australian national identity, both generally and culturally. Criticises the proportion of resources assigned to the importation of foreign exhibitions, while conceding their value in stimulating debate and encouraging wider understanding of contemporary art. Comments on the trend of Internationalism. Questions the approach of critics who judge Australian art as if in competition with overseas work. Argues that national context is important but also that artificial borders should not prevent efforts to discover commonality.

Jane Pountney
Mt Martha
31-35

Robert Leonard and Stuart McKenzie
Pathetic Projections: Wilfulness in the Wilderness
36-44
Discusses the artistic development of Colin McCahon as a reflection of different philosophies. Analyses, as examples representative of different periods and styles, the paintings 'Takaka : night and day', 'The promised land', 'On building bridges', 'Fourteen stations of the cross' and 'Untitled (the days and nights in the wilderness-)'.

Andrew Drummond
Three Tablets for the Manukau
45-54

Jacqueline Fraser
The Wishing Trees
55

Alice Shopland
Dinner at the This World Café
56-59

Rod Barnett
Agriculture Proxima Sapientiae
60-66
Outlines schools of thought in the history of landscaping. Discusses natural and non-natural meanings in the context of garden design theory. Analyses the design of the garden Villa Lante, near Rome.

Ruth Watson
The Soul is the Prison of the Body
67-74

Christina Barton and Priscilla Pitts
Unearthing Nature: land projects by 4 artists, 1969-1980
75-96
A photoessay of installations in natural surroundings, and naturally occurring artistic effects by Christine Hellyar, Boyd Webb, Pauline Rhodes and Andrew Drummond.

Alexis Hunter
Nine pages from a sketchbook
97-105
An illustrated retelling of snatches of Maori folklore. A paragraph on the significance of Maori legends, drawing parallels with Western myths.

Maureen Lander
Kohukohu or Horeke? An investigation of Charles Heaphy’s ‘View of the Kahu-Kahu, Hokianga River’ 1839
106-119
Discusses confusion over the location illustrated in the ink and watercolour by Charles Heaphy. Examines contemporary writings and pictorial evidence to identify it.

Bruce Barber
Addition
120-125
Examines the etymology of the word perform and its derivatives.

Lucy Macdonald
The Capture of Manuka
126-130

* * * 

Antic 6
November 1989

Price: $11

Editors Tina Barton, Susan Davis and Priscilla Pitts

Copyright reverts to authors on publication

Antic is published with assistance from The Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand

Cover: Julia Morison, from Quiddities I – X, 1989

Contents

Ngahuia te Awekotuku
He whakaaro, he whakaahua
1-2

Lita Barrie
Cindy Sherman’s Elaborate Masquerade
3-4

Ruth Watson
Much ado about some bodies: Adventures in the Shed
5-11

Tony Lane
St Eustace: a sequence of images
12-19

Giovanni Intra
Rise
20, 78, 102

Lloyd Geering
McCahon and Christianity
22-31

Barbara Tuck
Impedimenta
32-34

Stuart McKenzie
Celestial Lavatories
35-4

Andrew Bull
Soul of the City
48-49

Imants Tillers and Wystan Curnow
An Exchange of Notes
50-54

Molly de ama
Handguide to Muses and Museology: an excerpt
55-60

Jennifer French
Bush Series 1-4
61-67

Bridget Sutherland
Sign of the Cross
68-79

Luise Fong
Moments of Bloom
80-83

John Hurrell
A brief look at Gilgulim, the doctrine of metempsychosis, and other tents of Lurianic Kabbalism, as revealed on p. 19301 of Imants Tillers’ Book of Power when that was displayed in Wellington in 1989, and in his earlier books Rendezvous with Configuration P and Three Facts
84-104

* * *

Antic 7

June 1990

Price: $11

Editors Tina Barton, Susan Davis and Priscilla Pitts

Guest editor: Laurence Simmons

Copyright reverts to authors on publication

Antic is published with assistance from The Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council of New Zealand

Cover design: Mary-Louise Browne

Endpapers: Ken Orchard, Marginal

Contents

Laurence Simmons
Editor’s Note: The Resistence to Psychoanalysis
1-2

Alex Calder
The Sand in My Eyes: Pleasure, Politics and Watching TV
3-10
Reviews television programme 'The Sandbaggers' commenting on its literary characteristics and its depiction of reality. Examines the fantastical elements in the programme and discusses psychoanalytic theories of fantasy.

Michael Harrison
The Way Animals Behave: Some Appropriations
11-19

Claudia Marquis
Principled Pleasures: Exploring Fantasy in Children’s Literature
20-36
Examines similarities between fantasy in creative-writing and psychoanalytical experience as seen by Freud. Refers to the psychic adventure of the boy Barney in 'The Haunting' by Margaret Mahy. Discusses phantasy as defined by Lacan and investigates the problematic of the subject in Mahy's 'The Tricksters'. Claims that there is a workable relationship between what literary critics call fantasy and what psychoanalysts call phantasy.


Margaret Dawson
KEA nestor notabilis
37-40

Stephen Zepke
Repetitions: Toward a Re-Construction of Phallic Univocality
41-56
Responds to articles by Lita Barrie 'Remissions : toward a deconstruction of phallic univocality' and 'Further toward a deconstruction of phallic univocality : deferrals' (in Antic 1 and 2). Discusses her reactions to feminism in art and the post-structuralist thinkers. Examines work entitled 'A Map of the Dark Continent which is neither dark nor unexplorable' by Ruth Watson.

Neil Pardington
‘Waiter!’
57-59

Bridget Sutherland
Psychoanalysis and the Art of Cbristine Webster
60-69

Rhonda Bosworth
Figure Study/In the Workroom
Ever/out (1989)
h/with (1989)
Their wedding/Mask (1985)
70-74

Laurence Simmons
Language is not Neutral: Killeen’s Feminism
75-94
Examines a series of paintings entitled 'Social Document' by Richard Killeen, which have feminism and a male painter's relationship/reaction to feminism as their central issue. Refers to the writings of Freud. Discusses the politics of difference and stereotypical images of women in art. Outlines the message in Killeen's work and mentions feminist discourse.

Popular Productions, NZ Today 1990
Don’t say a word just look at the pictures
95-104

Terrence Handscomb
How Theoretical is my Neurosis? Schizoanalysis contrecoup Psychoanalysis
105-113
Discusses function of the ego in an analysis of art theory, mentioning traditional psychoanalysts in comparison with Lacanian analysts. Argues that the pertinence of any composite image is not its negotiable meaning, its political, historical or commercial viability, nor its contiguity with a particular body of theory.

>>>>>

Antic 8

December 1990

{This issue was not held by the National Library of New Zealand and I have reconstructed this list using Index New Zealand.}

Ruth Watson
Forget me not : a consideration of Edward Bullmore's 'Self portrait', 19 59
2-3
Reflects on the male and female attributes suggested by the image. Comments on the effect of period on its interpretation.

Robin Craw
Visible difference : nationalist repertoires and the semiotics of place in New Zealand science
4-7
Discusses the effect of the local environment in developing scientific study with a uniquely NZ perspective. Considers how far art and science conform to the notion of the Nationalist Landscape proposed by Francis Pound.Tony Green    

Marie Shannon
Calling out around the world
8-9

Ewen McDonald
There are only lovers and others : an interview with Rosalie Gascoigne
10-13
The expatriate artist talks about her work, focusing on the materials she uses. Briefly discusses Colin McCahon.

Allen Meek
Grey mythologies
16-20
Considers the implications of Grey's preface to 'Polynesian Mythology', his collection of Maori narratives. Emphasises the link between ethnography and colonisation. Explores the role of writing in both over-simplifying/distorting and preserving knowledge. Compares Grey's treatment of the original Maori material to the literary revision by Antony Alpers in 'Maori Myths and Tribal Legends'. Comments on attitudes revealed by the use made of Maori legendary figures by pakeha poets and critics James K Baxter, Keith Sinclair and C K Stead.

Rangihiroa Panoho
Another view of the photographs of Laurence Aberhart
22-27
Argues against the interpretation that the photographer's work represents a colonised Maori culture in a state of decay. Suggests that the images trigger associations for Maori of which Aberhart is unaware. Notes that culture is continually evolving.

George Hubbard and Robin Craw
Choice! : beyond kia ora : the paraesthetics of Choice!
28
In a commentary which accompanied the exhibition, questions the definition of Maoriness in relation to art.

Stephen Zepke
Choice! : difference without binary oppositions : a chance for a Choice!
29
Reviews the Auckland exhibition, focusing on the issue of Maori and Pakeha identity as reflected in art.

Bill Hammond
Hooks
30-31

Derek Schulz
The making of 'History and its theatre' : Wayne Barrar, Joanna Margaret Paul, Matt Pine, Frances Jill Studd, Aromea Tahiwi - with Rangihiroa Pan oho inside the Wanganui Regional Museum
32-34
Backgrounds the creation of the exhibition. Discusses contributions of the individual artists, commenting on differences of approach between Maori and Pakeha.

Preface : thoughts on a lost tradition
35-37
Muses about the nature of art and modernism in the arts.

Constructuralist production
Isabella and Lorenzo
38-39

Deborah Lawler-Dormer
Feminine tactical strategies: 'the experimenting video'
40-45
Identifies the issues being explored in feminist experimental videos. Discusses some of the techniques used to change the habitual ways of viewing film. Notes similarities to the theories of writer Luce Irigaray. Includes stills from 'ESOteric EGG SandWitches' by Lynda Earle and 'Lost narratives' by Fiona Gray.

Judy Millar
The elegance of anxiety : a two-page poem
46-47

Peter Wells
I ain't no faggot
48-49
Describes how the 1 minute 59 second film 'A Taste of Kiwi' points out the relationship between a Steinlager television commercial advertising rugby and male homosexual pornography.

Michael Stevenson
Moon fever hits Inglewood
50-51

Rebecca Tansley
Self-centred cinema : language and the writer in 'An angel at my table'
52-53
Explores the nature of autobiography and that of role transfer in the filming and acting of autobiography. Discusses the importance of language to Frame as revealed through the written autobiography, and indicates ways in which the film adaptation tries to show this.

Reading list, 19 March 2016

The new CODE | WORDS project, a series of back-and-forth conversations about aspects of museums in the digital age, is unfurling. The latest is an exchange between John Gordy and Rachel Ropeik on the metaphor of museum as platform. They began by politely disagreeing on MuseumHack (something I wrote about a while ago with respect to founder Nick Gray's talk about Webstock in February).

The Cooper Hewitt marks the first year of operation of the Pen (their digital visitor aid, which allows you to collect information about exhibitions and objects on display, and use interactive tables in the gallery spaces) by opening up the data collected thus far.

A lengthy article about the history of humans feeling bad about the way they smell, from ancient Egypt to modern day feminine scented wipes. Fascinating for the way product marketing has come to dictate how we feel about the body's natural functions.

Whether you're feeling it yet or not, the technology industry is reshaping our workplaces, not just with the tools it develops and sells, but through the philosophy it espouses. I find myself strangely defensive when it comes to the remote-first, no-meeting, always-chatting workplace (crossed with the 'venerate the real worker, four hours of flow' mantra). I think it's because I find it culturally one-eyed, and I'd love to know how a Samoan, or Indian, or Nigerian workplace might be organised, and see what we can learn from those values and methods. Nonetheless: Annalee Newitz on the Slack take-over, and Virginia Heffernan on the elimination of meeting culture.

I feel like so much of the online aesthetic milieu that surrounds me is summed up in this lengthy article of Kinfolk and its kith, 'The Last Lifestyle Magazine'. I was particularly struck by the quote "[Editor Nathan] Williams doesn't have a personal Instagram and the official magazine account only posts once or twice a week, but #kinfolk is used about once a minute."

I found this "exit interview" with the departing director of the Honolulu Museum of Art, Stephan Jost, really fascinating. It's the first time I've heard an American art gallery director use the concepts of an indigenous culture to describe their work. OTOH, this article in The Star about Jost's recruitment as the new head of the AGO in Toronto has all the trappings I associate with North American institutions (boards! dinners! wealth managers! a "coronation"!).

Art snark and web page annotations

I've been interested in Genius (the annotation website that started out as Rap Genius but has expanded its model outwards in the last couple of years) for a few years now. I've only just caught up with the fact though that there's a Chrome plug-in that can be used to add annotations to any web page. Accompanying that is News Genius, which describes itself as " a community of prize-winning writers, passionate readers, artists, designers, engineers, students ... pushing the limits of how people have traditionally read and related to the news by annotating new stories every day". In this Google spreadsheet you can see a list of news and magazine stories that have been annotated.

I first came upon all this in the wild over the weekend, when Carolina Miranda, an LA Times visual arts columnist and blogger, linked to an annotation of a NY Times by Conrad De Aenlle, 'Los Angeles Art Scene Comes Into Its Own'.

Before I downloaded the plug-in, the annotated article looked like this:

(You can see this version of the page here.) After downloading, it looked like this:

Now, most of Miranda's annotations are West Coast - East Coast snark (for example, First quote goes to guy who doesn’t live in L.A. and works for a European art fair company that operates in Miami.) But I'm quite fascinated by the tool nonetheless.

On one level, it allows for semi-private unpicking, criticism or ridiculing of the content of a web page (I *think* you can annotate and share any page by creating an account and then appending 'genius.it' to any page.) You could imagine, for example, a group of people sharing around an annotated exhibition listing from any public gallery website, any CNZ media release, and EyeContact review.

On the other, it could be a simple and powerful tool for crowd-use of any piece of digital or digitised content, regardless of whether the site the content is hosted on has enabled that themselves. Take the amazing resource that is the digitised copies of Te Ao Hou and imagine all those article and images available for annotation, cross-referencing, and linking into the rest of the web.

I am currently thinking about ways I want to extend the beginnings I made by starting the timeline of feminist art movement in New Zealand on Wikipedia. Annotation and cross-referencing is very much on my mind. I'm looking for a tool (probably Evernote, but I'm open to suggestions) to help me gather and annotate texts and while Genius isn't it (the problem being that most of the text I want to work with isn't already online) it's given me a few inklings ...

Reading list, 12 March 2016

Like wiggling a loose tooth or slowing down to rubberneck at a car crash, I can't stop myself from following Tiffany Jenkins' promotional pieces for her new book, which is an argument against repatriation of objects from British museums. In her latest, for 'populist capitalist' website CapX, Jenkins makes yet more of those blatantly tone-deaf arguments that incensed me last week, including the assertion that "Instead of repatriating artifacts, we need to appreciate them in the institutions which care for them – our great museums. For it is here that their true value and meaning is realised.". Read at your own peril.

A list of long-form articles about archives and archiving, from punk rock to cemeteries. Chosen partly because one of the articles was originally a keynote given by Ed Summers at my beloved NDF conference (proposals being accepted now ...)

Christopher Knight's review of the opening show at LA dealer gallery Hauser Wirth & Schimmel, Revolution in the Making: Abstract Sculpture by Women 1947-2016, reminds me a great deal of Priscilla Pitt's 1998 survey Contemporary New Zealand Sculpture. There's also an interesting observation at the end that a quarter of the works in the show are on loan from 13 public institutions.

Anne Salmond's eulogy for Ranginui Walker.

ACMI in Melbourne has announced the plans for its blended staff and co-working offices; staff move into the new spaces this month and tenants start moving in in April. An interesting trans-Tasman link for Te Papa's forthcoming Innovation Hub?

All of Christchurch Art Gallery's publications, all online, all in one place. Awesome.

Finally, today at The Dowse we open this is the cup of your heart, curated by our 2016 CNZ/Blumhardt Foundation curatorial intern Alice Tappenden. This isn't an encouragement to read anything, but you should definitely come and see the show.

Reading list, 5 March 2016

The Rauschenburg Foundation widens access to images of the artist's work for non-commercial purposes: Because of the policy change, the foundation expects to lose nearly half its image-rights income — which has been slightly more than $100,000 a year — but Ms. MacLear said she believed the loss was well worth furthering Mr. Rauschenberg’s legacy and supporting scholarship.

The annual TrendsWatch report is out from the AAM's Center for the Future of Museums: you can download it at this link. Philip Kennicott writes up two of the trends identified - changes to the way we work, and changes to how we regard and value happiness - in his argument that museums need to 'focus on the question of leisure and how we can recapture it'.

Four Berlin museums, sponsored by the German culture ministry, are working together to train and pay (a bigger deal than it sounds) Syrian and Iraqi refugees to give native language tours for fellow refugees.

Two of the stories from E-Tangata that have stuck with me this week: ‘How many brown faces are there in your reporting team?’ by Steve Deane and Confused about tikanga? Join the club by Moana Maniapoto.

The university year has started, Salient is being published, and Ruby Joy Eade has written a great piece about Dashper & Friends at City Gallery Wellington. You (I) forget that more art writing is probably taking place in student publications than in mainstream newspapers these days.


What might have been a blah article outraged by an Australian art gallery not stocking art magazines on Artshub turns into a fascinating piece on where art magazine publishing is looking for new stockists and readers, and what visitors at various institutions want to buy.

Who owns culture - thoughts provoked by Tiffany Jenkins

Over the weekend, I participated in an accidental masterclass on contemporary museum values. It all started on Friday afternoon, when I read British sociologist and writer Tiffany Jenkins' recent blog post for OUP, which marks the launch of her OUP-published book Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums, and Why They Should Stay There. The blog post left me aghast - for reasons I will come to soon. 

I've struggled in the past with what I see as Jenkins' rigid - even wilful - reluctance to treat with museums on their own contemporary terms, and her tendency instead to frame all arguments in absolute terms of what museums are and aren't for. The OUP post is the latest in a couple of years' worth of strongly worded and (I believe) intentionally provocative statements Jenkins has made on the topic of museums repatriating collection items to source communities. (It makes sense that earlier columns, such as this one for The Scotsman or this one for Spiked, both from 2014, were leading up to this book.)

Jenkins is vigorously opposed to repatriation, and - for that matter - to many of the contemporary activities and goals of museums. From the Scotsman, her definition of the purpose of museums:

The role of museums is to further understanding of past civilisations and their accomplishments. 

And from that Spiked article, on the British Museum's decision to loan one of the Elgin Marbles to the Hermitage Museum as a self-conscious act of cultural diplomacy:

This is about soft power, improving relations between countries, rather than inspiring people with the artworks and the values of the ancient world. The loan is an attempt to show the relevance of museums to modern society. If they can prove they are essential to international relations, they might survive. 

These strategies threaten the future of the museum. Pursuing social outcomes that museums can’t possibly achieve will come at the cost of their core role: research and dissemination of knowledge. The decision to loan the marbles to Russia shows that museum heads today have things completely the wrong way around: artefacts should not be put to work for the museum; the museum should be put to work to understand the artefacts. 

In her blog post, Jenkins makes a series of assertions, including:

• repatriation activities are not only returning collection items to source communities, but limiting what museum-going audiences (where 'museum' means, implicitly, the encyclopedic collections of parts of Europe and North America) can see and learn from 
• the involvement of source communities in decisions about the management, research and display of collection items makes an 'unfortunate elision [] between someone’s ethnicity and their authority to speak definitively about cultural artefacts, which excludes those who do not share that ethnicity, despite their expertise' and leads to 'the disappearance from public display of important material' and the restriction of access on the basis of spiritual, religious and cultural beliefs 
• consulting a source community in research for a collection or exhibition ('it’s true that people who may be close to the original manufacture and use of an artefact will reveal a significant amount about its creation, use and meanings') is okay, but 'granting a measure of control to people on the basis of their apparent cultural roots' risks threatening the museum's highest purpose, as 'a secular institution in the service of historical inquiry' 

The most breathtaking assertion to my eyes however was this:

The Western traditions for the production and disposition of knowledge [] are the best way to research history and culture. Indeed, surrendering the authority to curate an exhibition to communities on the basis of their identity hinders the understanding of the very people it claims to help, because the effect is to make it impossible to research historical—and current—indigenous life. And it is an approach that does nothing to address the political and economic problems faced by indigenous populations. 

I was blown away by what I perceived as the enormous arrogance of that position. At that point, I wrote two tweets 

Sweet jeepers: "The Western traditions for the production and disposition of knowledge [are] the best way to research history and culture."

— Courtney Johnston (@auchmill) February 26, 2016

That last from the ever-reliable Tiffany Jenkins https://t.co/c6bJbmn8rG #ttrttpt

— Courtney Johnston (@auchmill) February 26, 2016

Via those tweets, a number of New Zealand museum professionals and cultural commentators went to the article and a robust, occasionally emotional, and occasionally defensive conversation ensued. I took part, here and there, but also settled into write a blog post - the first draft of which was definitely emotional and defensive, and not especially robust. Since then, I've been following the conversation, and trying to widen my understanding, and trying to articulate my own position - an endeavour that has resulted in this piece you're reading now.

From that blog post I went to Jenkins' site, and found there this review of her book, by John Carey, published in the Sunday Times. Carey describes the book as "an outstanding achievement, clear-headed, wide-ranging and incisive" and Jenkins' position as a defence of "the enlightenment ideal of universal knowledge" against the "betrayal" of Western museums returning artefacts (obtained legally or illegally) to source communities. He also notes that "[a]t its most extreme the case for repatriation can sound like the ravings of some weird apocalyptic sect", a characterisation of communities' desire to have their taonga returned to them that is best unsympathetic and at worst - well, I'll leave it to you to decide what your 'at worst' is.

Carey extrapolates Jenkins' arguments against the return of the Rosetta Stone to Egypt, the Elgin Marbles to Greece, and the Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, with recent atrocities committed against cultural heritage:

Her book is timely. The enemies of enlightenment are strong. In March 2015, Isis bulldozed Nimrud; in September they destroyed parts of Palmyra. That the great national museums should safeguard their collections has never seemed more vital. 

This kind of generalisation - that museums' collections are under an ideological threat from repatriation that is equivalent to the danger posed to architecture and objects in an ideologically-driven war zone - is inflammatory in the extreme.

It's worth taking a moment to interrogate the word 'enlightenment' there, because it's important. Far from being the kind of omniscient, objective institution Jenkins and Carey describe, today's Western encyclopediac museums are founded upon a set of English and North American Enlightenment-era ideals, relating to how the natural and cultural phenomena of the world should be collected, organised, studied, interpreted, displayed, and made publicly accessible. The British Museum's Enlightenment Gallery sets out the museum's raison d'être - of universal collections and universal access (a term which has morphed with time, as originally 'universal' originally meant "learned and studious men, both native and foreign": the right of access was limited to those of the correct gender, educational level, and financial ability to travel).

Tangentially, the BM's own study guide for this gallery is a fascinating read. To the point however: in 2004 the then-director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor (who stood down at the end of last year) mounted a spirited, eloquent, and almost convincing defence of the need for institutions like the British Museum to hold true to these ideals and, in particular, resist the pressures to return items to source communities, or the "narrowing of [an] object's meaning and its appropriation to one political agenda", actions which would both threaten the public's ability to encounter a collection that "embraces the whole world" and therefore "consider the whole world".

This is a noble and important goal and role. It's one that Jenkins clearly believes in wholeheartedly. However, I personally and professionally believe it to be a goal and role that can't be treated as one static set of unchanging rules and conditions, but one that must be aspired to, and worked on, at a level that effectively encounters each item that resides in a museum collection on its own terms, with respect to who it was created by, when, and where, and with what original intent - and the path it travelled from its source to the storeroom or gallery in which is now lies. I fundamentally support the collaborative care of collections in partnership with source communities. I acknowledge that the repatriation of objects is a far more nuanced and difficult topic - and one that changes in every instance under consideration - and I don't claim to have any hands-on professional experience in this area, let alone guidance as to when repatriation is "right" or "wrong". But I disagree with Jenkins' assertion that a source communities claim must always be bested by that of the enlightenment museum.

To ensure I wasn't just going off half-cocked, I sat down and read the first chapter of Jenkins' book, which is available online. The book has three aims, which she delineates in this introduction. First, she sets out to explain how Western museums (my modifier, not hers) have assembled their collections over time. Here she acknowledges that 'repatriation sceptics' - a group she sees herself as aligned to, but not part of - tend to "underplay the more questionable acts by means of which objects were seized".

Second, she seeks to understand why the conversation around repatriation is becoming louder, and the number of requests is growing. She writes:

More countries, groups, and individuals have agitated for the return of ‘their’ artefacts since the late 1980s than did in the past. The objects that they want returned were taken centuries ago. Yet the cries for return escalate. ... Returning artefacts is said to heal the wounds of the past, to provide a kind of therapy to the descendants of those violated, and to restore the objects to their rightful place. Great claims are made for what repatriation can do and what the movement of cultural artefacts can achieve. 

My hackles rose as soon as I read this - based entirely on my education and experience as a 21st century museum professional raised in Aotearoa New Zealand. Perhaps the "cries for return escalate" because indigenous communities all around the world are finally - after decades or centuries of economic, educational and social disadvantage resulting from colonial actions - finding themselves in the position to think about expanding their reclamation of self-governance to their lost heritage, and also having the social, political and and financial leverage to undertake this work?

Thirdly, Jenkins outlines what she sees as the role of the museum. For her, this is clear (even in our ever-more nuanced times):

My central observation is that our great museums as institutions are struggling to find their place in the new millennium, and that this is an important contributing factor in why they have become the object of scrutiny, and defensive in response. Social changes and intellectual currents have contributed to challenging the foundational purpose of the museum: to extend our knowledge of past people and their lives. Since the latter half of the twentieth century, museums have faced a crisis of conscience and confidence, as an array of social and intellectual shifts—including the ideas of postmodernism and postcolonialism, which question the possibility of knowledge and common understanding—have become mainstream. With the influence of these trends, the institution has become a focus of a relentless critique, castigated for historical wrongs and current social ills. (My emphasis)

Here Jenkins frames the museum sector's evolving understanding and interpretation of its role in society in negative, reactive and reluctant terms - rather than proactive, collaborative, and socially-driven ones. Her assertion of "the foundational purpose of the museum: to extend our knowledge of past people and their lives" is one she defends against all things she sees as encroachments, from co-curation of exhibitions to child-oriented programming.

All of this left such a sour taste in my mouth, and anger in my heart. I mentally railed against Jenkins' solipsism, her Eurocentricism, her patronising tone towards the descendants of those people who originally made, lived with, used or worshipped the objects to which she refers: the "sincere laypeople from the relevant cultural group", a phrasing which denies the learning and professionalism of so many I see working around me in Aotearoa New Zealand, and in particular the role and work of kaitiaki Maori here.

So I went looking elsewhere. I went, for example, to the work of an anthropologist Jenkins disparages in that blogpost. I elided Ruth B. Phillips' name in the above quote, so let me reintroduce it here:

Removing artefacts that were once on display is an increasingly common practice in museums with indigenous collections, one celebrated by the anthropologist Ruth Phillips, as rendering objects “invisible” and as a “grand refusal of key Western traditions for the production and disposition of knowledge.” 

... Scholarship cannot thrive if limits are placed on who can investigate the past, or if lines of investigation are shut down. The Western traditions for the production and disposition of knowledge, so disparaged by Ms Phillips, are the best way to research history and culture. 

The quoted phrases from Phillips are drawn from a chapter of her book Museum Pieces: Toward the Indigenization of Canadian Museums, and a chapter from which Jenkins' quotes can be (mostly) read online. It relates to the return of particular taonga - ceremonial objects, never intended for general public display - to their original tribal owners. It describes what is to my mind the future of the responsible and responsive museum: a storehouse at the service of its many communities, a place where objects and ideas are lodged, but also released, on the basis of community consensus and changing needs.

I went to Huhana Smith's description of taonga in E Tu Ake, a description that conveys the power of objects and ideas and cultural knowledge as far more active and pluripotent than Jenkins' static objects, which wait to be cracked and communicated by qualified researchers:

taonga - both physical and intangible - have a vital connection to a living culture. They are sacred links to the past - a past that is alive in the present and that guides Maori towards the future. Taonga are an expression not only of the histories, identities and world views of Maori, but also the future political aspirations of this strong and resilient culture. 

I went to Mark O'Neill's (head of Glasgow Museums) response to Neil MacGregor's article above, and the the preceding 2002 Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums, signed by over 30 international museums, asserting the universal values MacGregor argues for. O'Neill challenges many of these assertions, including the implication that the non-returning of objects is somehow a neutral act. He writes, near his conclusion:

Unless the museums which signed the Declaration make a fundamental shift in their basic mode of engaging with visitors, they will remain not universal, but narrowly metropolitan. Despite new mission statements tailored to fit the political language of our time, they continue to insist on being the centre, not merely in a geographical or demographic sense which could be transcended, but as the point from which all others are viewed and judged. The clearest evidence for this is the almost complete absence of any but the curatorial voice from their displays - there is no technical or aesthetic reason why historical and/or contemporary voices from the cultures which produced the objects couldn’t be included. The sense of being the invisible centre is reinforced by the exemption of one culture in each museum from scrutiny – that of the metropolitan country itself. 

And I stumbled upon a piece by Tessa Laird, published in Natural Selection in 2007, that I have not previously read, a meditation on her visit to the Musee Quai Branly on the occasion of its opening, and her discomfort there. Laird writes:

I experienced moments of elation and moments of a kind of dread and even nausea (perhaps it was the jetlag). I felt giddy at the enormity and weirdness of it all. Because, no matter the architecture, the multimedia, the MONEY, it was still white people looking at the sacred artefacts of non-white people for a frisson, a tingling of the nerves, a form of entertainment like any other. And while it’s an enormous privilege to be able to view such works, it’s one I’d gladly relinquish for the far greater privilege of witnessing the return of these objects, masterpieces, taonga, to their original people and contexts. 

In the end, I think that the only truly “modern” museum is one that repatriates its collections. Just imagine all the “going home” stories! If each one could be as detailed and magnificent as the one elucidated by Paul Tapsell in Pukaki: A Comet Returns, we would be culturally richer, not poorer, for the process. These are the stories I want to hear. 

It's a thought experiment worth working through. What if we could go back and say to every original maker or owner: This is what we who manage the museum believe it is for - to share knowledge and beliefs through objects and scholarship. Do you wish your taonga to be part of this? And on what terms? What would we learn about ourselves, not only from those objects, but from those conversations? What understanding of the "whole world" could we foster then?

Reading List, 27 February 2016

An analysis of MOMA's catalogue records, looking at 'years' information: the artist's age when a work was created, the lag between the date of creation and date of acquisition, etc. As with with most of these visualisations, better as a place to start asking questions than finish asking them.

On the language of start-up culture (and looking for a better language, and culture).

Because most of my free time over the past week has gone into starting this: a timeline of the feminist art movement in New Zealand.

a darkened auditorium with 264 silent people in the seats. on the stage, me, sitting on a stool, lit by a spotlight, the only light in the theatre. i hold up a photo of my cat, 10 people applaud, two or three hold up photocopies of the same photo, the rest do nothing, watching, waiting.

I just don't get tumblr, but this is a fascinating history-slash-analysis: The Secret Lives of Tumblr Teens.

This is a really great interview with Enjoy Public Art Gallery director Emma Ng on #500words.

Aotearoa New Zealand feminist art timeline

Yesterday afternoon I went looking for something to do with a feminist art project in New Zealand - I actually forget what now - on the internet. And is common with New Zealand art topics - but especially with this one - I found nada.

So I had a little rage on Twitter, which was all very nice and generated some lovely back and forth, but ultimately unproductive

There really are fuck-all traces of Aotearoa's feminist art history available online and that incenses me.

— Courtney Johnston (@auchmill) February 21, 2016

So I sat down last night, like the lapsed art historian I am, and racked my memory and shook down the pages of the internet and made a start on something I've been intending to do for awhile: the Aotearoa New Zealand feminist art timeline on Wikipedia.

Now, I know that it is incomplete, has thus far no mention of gender politics or intersectionality, and does not reference Pasifika artists. It badly needs a list of the significant artists (and the ones who time has already forgotten) who engaged with feminist topics and or viewed their own practice in this way. It lacks most of the main publications of the 1980s and 1990s and is woefully lacking in the 2000s full-stop. But I plan to chip away at it, because (dear reader, a hushed tone here) I think I would like to maybe make this a book one day. God knows we need one.

So approach this seedling with some gentleness, and please feel free to send me information that should be added (properly referenced, of course).

Reading list, 20 February 2016

An interview with Meg Rosoff, author of one of my top 10 books, How I Live Now.

Grim reading from the Canadian equivalent of our briefing for the incoming minister on the underfunding of capital works and programmes at Canada's national cultural institutions.

We currently have a paucity of long-form recording and analysis of art exhibitions in New Zealand. That's why Francis McWhannell's piece on Auckland Art Gallery's Necessary Distraction for Pantograph Punch was such a pleasure to read.

Toby Morris and Toby Manhire produce a weekly column for the Radio New Zealand website, a combination of their political and social insight shot through with pop-culture references and enhanced by Morris's cartooning skills. It's a form of critique and storytelling that I find really compelling. This week's column was about Christchurch, the aftershocks, and mental health funding.

God it's hard to rebrand a museum. Just ask the Metropolitan Museum of Art. With bonus reactions in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, proving that people hate change and suggesting - to my mind, anyway, that while the Met wants to 'be for all', people expect a certain kind of stately grace from it. 

The Cooper Hewitt adds collecting wall panel text to the Pen's capabilities (and more importantly, gives an object lesson in continual improvement).

I'm really enjoying Seph Rodney's pieces on Hyperallergic: the latest is on three New York museums that have built in or around spaces for public programmes and participatory art.