In my monthly spot on RNZ's Nine to Noon programme, I looked at two NZ museums joining a global effort to bring together watercolour artworks from before the era of photography; why the Met was forced to return a gold-sheathed coffin to Egypt; and the Māori Art Market running alongside Te Matatini.
Wednesday, 27 February 2019
Saturday, 23 February 2019
Reading list, 23 February 2019
A long write-up in the Sydney Morning Herald of the planned renewal changes to ACMI, including its permanent exhibition and rather discouraging reception areas, with discussion of "the lens", destined to be the new "the pen".
Saturday, 16 February 2019
Reading list, 16 February 2019
Three pieces on words ...
Nicole Martinez's A Lively Debate on the Value of the Term “Latinx”, for Hyperallergic
Aaron Bady's White Words for Popula (on the notion of "Eskimos having more than 50 words for snow")
And a 2018 publication from the Netherland's Research Centre for Material Culture, Words Matter, in which curators and museum staff write about art, word choice and communication in light of the rapid changes around the language used in art work titles and interpretation in the European context (much more interesting than I've made it sound)
Nicole Martinez's A Lively Debate on the Value of the Term “Latinx”, for Hyperallergic
Aaron Bady's White Words for Popula (on the notion of "Eskimos having more than 50 words for snow")
And a 2018 publication from the Netherland's Research Centre for Material Culture, Words Matter, in which curators and museum staff write about art, word choice and communication in light of the rapid changes around the language used in art work titles and interpretation in the European context (much more interesting than I've made it sound)
Saturday, 9 February 2019
Reading list, 9 February 2019
This week's listening: Kim Hill interviews Gregggggggggorrrrrry Burke, incoming director of the AAG.
From a podcast that's new to me: Expectations and Epiphanies with [UK's National Portrait Gallery] Director Nicholas Cullinan. I'm also starting to mine the Art Agency Partners' (an arts agency that's a subsidiary of Sothebys, explaining their access) backlog of articles, including this one on the squishy (often icky) definitions of outsider / self-taught / outlier art.
It's gonna take me ages to to process this: Dan Hill's The city is my homescreen - "How design practice can work better for people, services and cities together, and not simply individuals".
I found this really thought-provoking: Johanna Jones of the Oakland Museum of California describes an evolution of her organisation's thinking on how to describe its value and mission, in What problem in our community is our museum most uniquely equipped to solve?
Lucie Paterson of ACMI on the development and testing of the physical/digital accompaniment to their exhibition Wonderland, The Lost Map of Wonderland — four months in (from August last year, but still really interesting).
Anne Helen Petersen just keeps banging it out. Here she is on a recent profile of Lorena Bobbitt, with bonus analysis of the 1990s and the cultural moment of postfeminist backlash.
"Either we say that improving health, wellbeing and social outcomes is our proper motivation, or we admit that the value of the arts is different to this." I don't think it's an either/or argument but Carter Gillies picks up here on something I've been thinking about in terms of how we position arts institutions and arts funding.
The German culture ministry has announced US$2.17 million for research into artifacts that entered German public collection in the colonial era. The eight member panel that will allocate the funding includes Bénédicte Savoy, co-author of the report on repatriation commissioned by French preseident Emmanuel Macron in 2018. It's striking to me that the German fund will be administered by the German Lost Art Foundation, established in 2015 to aid with Nazi-looted artworks; it's a reminder that repatriation and restitution look very different in every national/geographic/historical context.
Endearing. Gig posters for science talks - by a cellular biologist.
From a podcast that's new to me: Expectations and Epiphanies with [UK's National Portrait Gallery] Director Nicholas Cullinan. I'm also starting to mine the Art Agency Partners' (an arts agency that's a subsidiary of Sothebys, explaining their access) backlog of articles, including this one on the squishy (often icky) definitions of outsider / self-taught / outlier art.
It's gonna take me ages to to process this: Dan Hill's The city is my homescreen - "How design practice can work better for people, services and cities together, and not simply individuals".
I found this really thought-provoking: Johanna Jones of the Oakland Museum of California describes an evolution of her organisation's thinking on how to describe its value and mission, in What problem in our community is our museum most uniquely equipped to solve?
Lucie Paterson of ACMI on the development and testing of the physical/digital accompaniment to their exhibition Wonderland, The Lost Map of Wonderland — four months in (from August last year, but still really interesting).
Anne Helen Petersen just keeps banging it out. Here she is on a recent profile of Lorena Bobbitt, with bonus analysis of the 1990s and the cultural moment of postfeminist backlash.
"Either we say that improving health, wellbeing and social outcomes is our proper motivation, or we admit that the value of the arts is different to this." I don't think it's an either/or argument but Carter Gillies picks up here on something I've been thinking about in terms of how we position arts institutions and arts funding.
The German culture ministry has announced US$2.17 million for research into artifacts that entered German public collection in the colonial era. The eight member panel that will allocate the funding includes Bénédicte Savoy, co-author of the report on repatriation commissioned by French preseident Emmanuel Macron in 2018. It's striking to me that the German fund will be administered by the German Lost Art Foundation, established in 2015 to aid with Nazi-looted artworks; it's a reminder that repatriation and restitution look very different in every national/geographic/historical context.
Endearing. Gig posters for science talks - by a cellular biologist.
Saturday, 2 February 2019
Reading list, 2 February 2019
Hartwig Fischer deployed a spectacularly misjudged bit of phrasing this week discussing demands for the return of the Parthenon marbles, saying that "When you move a cultural heritage to a museum, you move it outside. However, this shifting is also a creative act." I say "spectacularly misjudged" because I am myself very guilty of opening my mouth and saying stupid things, or saying things stupidly. However, the British Museum backed this up through a statement, saying in the piece of Guardian reporting linked above that "Hartwig Fischer was stating the longstanding position of the British Museum".
Jonathan Jones reliably leapt on to the resultant controversy: as always, I hope he is not responsible for his headlines - Let's not lose our marbles over the British Museum boss's remarks.
And speaking of reliable, an otherwise on-point piece of BBC reporting on the Pitt Rivers Museum's repatriation efforts brings conservative warhorse Tiffany Jenkins in to trot out her opinions once more about the role of museums as world knowledge centres, cultural contexts be damned.
Moving on. The reliably interesting Gray Market newsletter for this week - Why the Government Shutdown's End Should Be Cold Comfort to US Arts Institutions.
Saved up for weekend reading: Doing the Work: [art journos] Carolina A. Miranda and Siddhartha Mitter in Conversation.
And Kajsa Hartsig on thinking of exhibitions as one of many possible endpoints.
Jonathan Jones reliably leapt on to the resultant controversy: as always, I hope he is not responsible for his headlines - Let's not lose our marbles over the British Museum boss's remarks.
And speaking of reliable, an otherwise on-point piece of BBC reporting on the Pitt Rivers Museum's repatriation efforts brings conservative warhorse Tiffany Jenkins in to trot out her opinions once more about the role of museums as world knowledge centres, cultural contexts be damned.
Moving on. The reliably interesting Gray Market newsletter for this week - Why the Government Shutdown's End Should Be Cold Comfort to US Arts Institutions.
Saved up for weekend reading: Doing the Work: [art journos] Carolina A. Miranda and Siddhartha Mitter in Conversation.
And Kajsa Hartsig on thinking of exhibitions as one of many possible endpoints.
Saturday, 26 January 2019
Reading list, 26 January 2019
A grubby, sad story: His Art, Their Ideas: Did Robert Indiana Lose Control of His Work?
I'm still pondering this manifesto in the Harvard Design Magazine by Joanna Kloppenburg and Nicholas Korody (What if we began by admitting that we hated writing this? What if we said we did it because we needed the money? What if we acknowledged that we had fallen out of love with architecture and couldn’t remember why we loved it in the first place?) alongside Anne Helen Petersen's How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation (Those expectations encapsulate the millennial rearing project, in which students internalize the need to find employment that reflects well on their parents (steady, decently paying, recognizable as a “good job”) that’s also impressive to their peers (at a “cool” company) and fulfills what they’ve been told has been the end goal of all of this childhood optimization: doing work that you’re passionate about.)
Conflict of interest much? A late nineteenth-century case less well known than the Elgin Marbles, but more scandalous in its scope, also victimised Cyprus. Luigi Palma de Cesnola was the U.S. consul there and used his consular office to strip Cyprus of a staggering 35,000 items of antiquity. This serial looter sold his collection to the new Metropolitan Museum of New York.
Seb Chan has started an enewsletter.
I'm still pondering this manifesto in the Harvard Design Magazine by Joanna Kloppenburg and Nicholas Korody (What if we began by admitting that we hated writing this? What if we said we did it because we needed the money? What if we acknowledged that we had fallen out of love with architecture and couldn’t remember why we loved it in the first place?) alongside Anne Helen Petersen's How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation (Those expectations encapsulate the millennial rearing project, in which students internalize the need to find employment that reflects well on their parents (steady, decently paying, recognizable as a “good job”) that’s also impressive to their peers (at a “cool” company) and fulfills what they’ve been told has been the end goal of all of this childhood optimization: doing work that you’re passionate about.)
Conflict of interest much? A late nineteenth-century case less well known than the Elgin Marbles, but more scandalous in its scope, also victimised Cyprus. Luigi Palma de Cesnola was the U.S. consul there and used his consular office to strip Cyprus of a staggering 35,000 items of antiquity. This serial looter sold his collection to the new Metropolitan Museum of New York.
Seb Chan has started an enewsletter.
Sunday, 20 January 2019
Art News New Zealand Column, Summer 2019
New Year's Resolutions
Early in January, Minneapolis's Walker Art Center posted an intriguing set of opinion pieces on their influential online magazine, under the rubric of New Year's resolutions for museums.
Laura Raicovich (who left the directorship of the Queens Museum last year after growing tensions with the institution's board around her progressive programming) called for a dismantling of the myth of neutrality, and a closer accord between an organisation's values and its operations. This touches every sphere of decision-making, she argues, from repatriation to recruitment decisions: in 2019 "the authority of the museum is being questioned not only in terms of what is collected and how, and what is exhibited and how it is shown, but also how decisions are made and who has the power to make them."
Nicole N. Ivy, educator, futurist and inclusion activist, urged art museums to "to examine who is not being represented in their collections and also reflect on their relationships to wealth inequality", in the pursuit of equity. Ivy cited the Baltimore Museum of Art's announcement last year that it would sell off a small number of collection works by 20th century white male artists to create a fund to buy the work of under-represented artists as an example of a museum "using their resources to expand access and promote the democratic circulation of their collections."
In the hardest hitting of the four short essays, artist and writer Antony Romero argued for long-term planning and work towards social change and representation over short-term profiling and programming: "Developing a program or exhibition that reflects upon or invites dialogue on some contemporary social movement, such as Black Lives Matter, for example, is not the same as investing in the cultivation of black life. It is never a question of representation over resource allocation. Both should be happening at the same time. Programmatic shifts should be taking place at the same time as resources are reallocated to bolster your institution’s commitment to investing in excluded communities." In emphatic prose that I have since seen repeatedly cited, Romero writes "Remember that you are not your institution. An institution is not an organism but an instrument, a tool. It may be a bloodied tool but remember there are no clean tools, only those that still serve a purpose and those that don’t."
Finally, Seb Chan, Chief Experience Officer at Melbourne's ACMI, made one concrete suggestion: do away with salary cloaking. It's not a phrase I'd hear before, but it's a practice I'm very familiar with - not advertising salary ranges and starting pay when recruiting. As Chan notes, the practice benefits those who have the "time and upfront confidence" when applying for roles, and also establishes "an unequal trust relationship between employer and employee which then continues when the employee is hired". Furthermore, inside the workplace, trading insider knowledge of people's pay "embeds individualized competition instead of collective camaraderie". Advertising salaries seems a small and noncontroversial measure, he acknowledges, but this is one of the " very first baby steps towards workplace diversity and community representation", which are going to be needed to face the truly brutal challenges facing society, from racial inequality to climate change.
When I worked in digital, we talked about "full stack" development: a consideration of what we were designing from the deepest backend of the hardware support to the individual actions of users on the frontend of the product. In reading these pieces, I see that same fullstack in operation - the change that all four writers are calling for requires honesty, authenticity and change throughout every phase of a museum's operations, from governance, funding and recruitment to collection development, fundraising and working conditions.
The essays also tap into a rising discussion around burn out, specifically (but not exclusively) focused on the millennial generation, the oldest members of which are now entering their late 30s. At the same time that I was considering the Walker essays, a piece by Buzzfeed reporter Anne Helen Petersen titled 'How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation' was being passed around and around my social network. Petersen's core argument - that burn out is not a temporary affliction but a permanent condition for those brought up to expect their work will be meaningful, even enviable, but working in a context of carrying massive student debt and facing increasing job instability - chimed with a memorable article published by Lucinda Bennett on the Pantograph Punch last April, where she interrogated the idea of 'passionate work' as it applies to the visual arts. When work is redefined as being done for love, Bennett writes, it becomes boundless: "even fulfilling work needs constraints and needs to be remunerated. Without the former, we never have time to rest, to attend to our physical and emotional needs, to spend time with our families and friends. We become burnt out, disillusioned, physically and mentally unwell."
And thus to resolutions. It seems a large task, to dismantle the inheritance of the Western museum and democratise its assets and influence. But as Chan notes, small steps take you somewhere. So when I did my first pieces of recruitment for 2019, I told candidates what the ceiling of the starting salary was, and published salary ranges up front. It's a small step but hopefully one in the right direction.
Read the originals:
https://walkerart.org/magazine/soundboard-4-museum-resolutions
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work
https://www.pantograph-punch.com/post/to-be-cared-for
Early in January, Minneapolis's Walker Art Center posted an intriguing set of opinion pieces on their influential online magazine, under the rubric of New Year's resolutions for museums.
Laura Raicovich (who left the directorship of the Queens Museum last year after growing tensions with the institution's board around her progressive programming) called for a dismantling of the myth of neutrality, and a closer accord between an organisation's values and its operations. This touches every sphere of decision-making, she argues, from repatriation to recruitment decisions: in 2019 "the authority of the museum is being questioned not only in terms of what is collected and how, and what is exhibited and how it is shown, but also how decisions are made and who has the power to make them."
Nicole N. Ivy, educator, futurist and inclusion activist, urged art museums to "to examine who is not being represented in their collections and also reflect on their relationships to wealth inequality", in the pursuit of equity. Ivy cited the Baltimore Museum of Art's announcement last year that it would sell off a small number of collection works by 20th century white male artists to create a fund to buy the work of under-represented artists as an example of a museum "using their resources to expand access and promote the democratic circulation of their collections."
In the hardest hitting of the four short essays, artist and writer Antony Romero argued for long-term planning and work towards social change and representation over short-term profiling and programming: "Developing a program or exhibition that reflects upon or invites dialogue on some contemporary social movement, such as Black Lives Matter, for example, is not the same as investing in the cultivation of black life. It is never a question of representation over resource allocation. Both should be happening at the same time. Programmatic shifts should be taking place at the same time as resources are reallocated to bolster your institution’s commitment to investing in excluded communities." In emphatic prose that I have since seen repeatedly cited, Romero writes "Remember that you are not your institution. An institution is not an organism but an instrument, a tool. It may be a bloodied tool but remember there are no clean tools, only those that still serve a purpose and those that don’t."
Finally, Seb Chan, Chief Experience Officer at Melbourne's ACMI, made one concrete suggestion: do away with salary cloaking. It's not a phrase I'd hear before, but it's a practice I'm very familiar with - not advertising salary ranges and starting pay when recruiting. As Chan notes, the practice benefits those who have the "time and upfront confidence" when applying for roles, and also establishes "an unequal trust relationship between employer and employee which then continues when the employee is hired". Furthermore, inside the workplace, trading insider knowledge of people's pay "embeds individualized competition instead of collective camaraderie". Advertising salaries seems a small and noncontroversial measure, he acknowledges, but this is one of the " very first baby steps towards workplace diversity and community representation", which are going to be needed to face the truly brutal challenges facing society, from racial inequality to climate change.
When I worked in digital, we talked about "full stack" development: a consideration of what we were designing from the deepest backend of the hardware support to the individual actions of users on the frontend of the product. In reading these pieces, I see that same fullstack in operation - the change that all four writers are calling for requires honesty, authenticity and change throughout every phase of a museum's operations, from governance, funding and recruitment to collection development, fundraising and working conditions.
The essays also tap into a rising discussion around burn out, specifically (but not exclusively) focused on the millennial generation, the oldest members of which are now entering their late 30s. At the same time that I was considering the Walker essays, a piece by Buzzfeed reporter Anne Helen Petersen titled 'How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation' was being passed around and around my social network. Petersen's core argument - that burn out is not a temporary affliction but a permanent condition for those brought up to expect their work will be meaningful, even enviable, but working in a context of carrying massive student debt and facing increasing job instability - chimed with a memorable article published by Lucinda Bennett on the Pantograph Punch last April, where she interrogated the idea of 'passionate work' as it applies to the visual arts. When work is redefined as being done for love, Bennett writes, it becomes boundless: "even fulfilling work needs constraints and needs to be remunerated. Without the former, we never have time to rest, to attend to our physical and emotional needs, to spend time with our families and friends. We become burnt out, disillusioned, physically and mentally unwell."
And thus to resolutions. It seems a large task, to dismantle the inheritance of the Western museum and democratise its assets and influence. But as Chan notes, small steps take you somewhere. So when I did my first pieces of recruitment for 2019, I told candidates what the ceiling of the starting salary was, and published salary ranges up front. It's a small step but hopefully one in the right direction.
Read the originals:
https://walkerart.org/magazine/soundboard-4-museum-resolutions
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work
https://www.pantograph-punch.com/post/to-be-cared-for
Saturday, 19 January 2019
Reading list, 19 January 2019
"Using his own fortune, Verdi built the retirement home for opera singers and musicians, a neo-Gothic structure that opened in 1899. The composer died less than two years later, but he made sure the profits from his music copyrights kept the home running until the early 1960s, when they expired. Today guests pay a portion of their monthly pension to cover basic costs – food and lodging — while the rest comes from donations." I love this so much.
"What role the Rothko served remains unclear to me." I love this a bit less (the trend, not the article). The Rise of the Mindful Museum.
More from the Walker's "Museum Resolutions" series: Laura Raicovich, Dismantle the Myth of Neutrality and Antony Romero's Build Social Relations Over Property Relations
Ted Loos in the NYT: After the Quake, Dana Schutz Gets Back to Work
I'm not sure what to make of this article yet, despite reading it twice. Good to read alongside the Schutz piece above; pity McLean didn't tie it off with Michael Parekowhai's chrome Cook sculptures. Ian McLean, Paper Tigers: The New Iconoclasm and Identity Politics, in Di'van: A Journal of Accounts, issue 4.
"What role the Rothko served remains unclear to me." I love this a bit less (the trend, not the article). The Rise of the Mindful Museum.
More from the Walker's "Museum Resolutions" series: Laura Raicovich, Dismantle the Myth of Neutrality and Antony Romero's Build Social Relations Over Property Relations
Ted Loos in the NYT: After the Quake, Dana Schutz Gets Back to Work
I'm not sure what to make of this article yet, despite reading it twice. Good to read alongside the Schutz piece above; pity McLean didn't tie it off with Michael Parekowhai's chrome Cook sculptures. Ian McLean, Paper Tigers: The New Iconoclasm and Identity Politics, in Di'van: A Journal of Accounts, issue 4.
Saturday, 12 January 2019
Reading list, 12 January 2019
I haven't linked to anything tech-related in ages. But I've been following Shelley Bernstein's thoughtful write-ups of her tech decisions for her workplaces for more than a decade now, and they're always worthwhile. On choosing collaboration tools to bring together a very diverse group: Prototyping a Change Network with the OF/BY/FOR ALL First Wave.
I also don't often link to workplace advice but this NYT article is much better than the title suggests. It actually delves into common issues with time-management and particularly how people get into toxic and stressful situations around things like answering emails - the four general personality types, how each responds to stressors, and how you can improve your instinctive approach. The 4 ‘Attachment Styles,’ and How They Sabotage Your Work-Life Balance.
Also unusual. As with Shelley, I've been following my friend Nat Torkington's 4 Short Links digest for years now. This page of project management aphorisms from NASA has some of your typical engineer machismo, but also some really great insights and timeless advice. 100+ Lessons Learned for Project Managers.
Back on the normal path. This article on the Guardian helped explicate a current artistic movement I've been struggling to wrap my head around, without going PhD-level on it. Political, forensic, hi-tech: how 'research architecture' is redefining art.
Colleen Dilenschneider on why members of cultural organisations don't renew. Valuable for parsing what people really mean when they say things like "I'll sign up again next time I visit".
Seb Chan on salary cloaking (ie. not stating salary ranges in museum job advertising)
My friend the typographer Kris Sowersby, founder of Klim Type Foundry, is one of the most prolific people I know - and one of the smartest. For some purely good writing, check out his design notes on his recent reversed-stress typeface Maelstrom, and Bethany Heck's review of Maelstrom in use.
An interesting set of responses to a question on Twitter about "actual examples" of decolonisation in museums.
And a profile of Kaywin Feldman, gearing up to take over the National Gallery of Art in Washington, bit of a personal hero.
I also don't often link to workplace advice but this NYT article is much better than the title suggests. It actually delves into common issues with time-management and particularly how people get into toxic and stressful situations around things like answering emails - the four general personality types, how each responds to stressors, and how you can improve your instinctive approach. The 4 ‘Attachment Styles,’ and How They Sabotage Your Work-Life Balance.
Also unusual. As with Shelley, I've been following my friend Nat Torkington's 4 Short Links digest for years now. This page of project management aphorisms from NASA has some of your typical engineer machismo, but also some really great insights and timeless advice. 100+ Lessons Learned for Project Managers.
Back on the normal path. This article on the Guardian helped explicate a current artistic movement I've been struggling to wrap my head around, without going PhD-level on it. Political, forensic, hi-tech: how 'research architecture' is redefining art.
Colleen Dilenschneider on why members of cultural organisations don't renew. Valuable for parsing what people really mean when they say things like "I'll sign up again next time I visit".
Seb Chan on salary cloaking (ie. not stating salary ranges in museum job advertising)
My friend the typographer Kris Sowersby, founder of Klim Type Foundry, is one of the most prolific people I know - and one of the smartest. For some purely good writing, check out his design notes on his recent reversed-stress typeface Maelstrom, and Bethany Heck's review of Maelstrom in use.
An interesting set of responses to a question on Twitter about "actual examples" of decolonisation in museums.
And a profile of Kaywin Feldman, gearing up to take over the National Gallery of Art in Washington, bit of a personal hero.
Sunday, 6 January 2019
Reading list, 6 January 2019
Fighting in your weight class: it's stimulating to read big critics robustly taking on big institutions and big shows, as with Peter Schjeldahl for the New Yorker and Roberta Smith for the NYT on the Met's Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera.
Ongoing, from the Macron report on restitution: Jason Farago assembles a roundtable for the NYT, Artwork Taken From Africa, Returning to a Home Transformed; French antiquities dealers slam ‘shocking’ report on restituting African art and The repatriation debate intensifies as calls for post-colonial restitution grow—but is it legal? in The Art Newspaper; Thomas Marks' editor's letter for Apollo, Rethinking the restitution of African artefacts.
And from a different political angle - tensions between France and Italy play out through museum loans: For Italy’s Populists, Everything Is a Nationalist Cause. Even Leonardo.
"Museums are not neutral. Displays of European Art are not neutral. White supremacists know it. We must see it too." Alexander Kauffman for Hyperallergic, Committing to Anti-Racism in Galleries of European Art.
Things I plan to read when I'm back at work (tomorrow, sigh) - Culture 24's latest report from the end of 2018, Understanding the social purpose of digital technology for arts and heritage organisations.
"The food we consume, what we enjoy, how we acquire nourishment, literally all the mechanisms that touch how we eat are fascinating. But the museums of ice cream, pizza, and avocado don’t provide any of that insight". Pissed off by the museum-of-X phenomenon but from another angle; Erin DeJesus for Eater, Fake Food Museums Are Our Greatest Monuments to the Brand Hellscape of 2018.
Ongoing, from the Macron report on restitution: Jason Farago assembles a roundtable for the NYT, Artwork Taken From Africa, Returning to a Home Transformed; French antiquities dealers slam ‘shocking’ report on restituting African art and The repatriation debate intensifies as calls for post-colonial restitution grow—but is it legal? in The Art Newspaper; Thomas Marks' editor's letter for Apollo, Rethinking the restitution of African artefacts.
And from a different political angle - tensions between France and Italy play out through museum loans: For Italy’s Populists, Everything Is a Nationalist Cause. Even Leonardo.
"Museums are not neutral. Displays of European Art are not neutral. White supremacists know it. We must see it too." Alexander Kauffman for Hyperallergic, Committing to Anti-Racism in Galleries of European Art.
Things I plan to read when I'm back at work (tomorrow, sigh) - Culture 24's latest report from the end of 2018, Understanding the social purpose of digital technology for arts and heritage organisations.
"The food we consume, what we enjoy, how we acquire nourishment, literally all the mechanisms that touch how we eat are fascinating. But the museums of ice cream, pizza, and avocado don’t provide any of that insight". Pissed off by the museum-of-X phenomenon but from another angle; Erin DeJesus for Eater, Fake Food Museums Are Our Greatest Monuments to the Brand Hellscape of 2018.
Saturday, 22 December 2018
Reading list. 22 December 2018
An article this week by my colleague Puawai Cairns for the Center for the Future of Museums blog - Decolonisation: we aren’t going to save you. Puawai also pointed this week to an earlier piece of writing by another of our colleagues, Sean Mallon, which is evergreen: Opinion: why we should beware of the word ‘traditional’.
Interesting job going at the Pitt Rivers, showing how deliberate and pointed research can be one of a museum's best tools of self-reflection and correction: the Research Associate - Labelling Matters is being recruited for a project to "dissect and dismantle some of the complex contested words, stereotypes and concepts that are present not only in museums but in society at large."
The V&A's Tristram Hunt must have a very active comms rep: here he is for the end of the year in The Art Newspaper, Museums must confront the big issues. Still a million times better than the dickwad bemoaning Kaywin Feldmen's appointment as director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington this week - he doesn't warrant a link.
And some listening for over the holiday break:
Circuit's end of year round-up is a two-parter this year, featuring Mark Amery, Shannon Te Ao, Simon Gennard and Health Galbraith. Part One: personal highlights, trends, best show // Part Two: biggest surprise, best publication, best writing, best moving image work
Suse Anderson of MuseoPunks interviews Christopher Bedford, director of Baltimore's Museum of Art
Interesting job going at the Pitt Rivers, showing how deliberate and pointed research can be one of a museum's best tools of self-reflection and correction: the Research Associate - Labelling Matters is being recruited for a project to "dissect and dismantle some of the complex contested words, stereotypes and concepts that are present not only in museums but in society at large."
The V&A's Tristram Hunt must have a very active comms rep: here he is for the end of the year in The Art Newspaper, Museums must confront the big issues. Still a million times better than the dickwad bemoaning Kaywin Feldmen's appointment as director of the National Gallery of Art in Washington this week - he doesn't warrant a link.
And some listening for over the holiday break:
Circuit's end of year round-up is a two-parter this year, featuring Mark Amery, Shannon Te Ao, Simon Gennard and Health Galbraith. Part One: personal highlights, trends, best show // Part Two: biggest surprise, best publication, best writing, best moving image work
Suse Anderson of MuseoPunks interviews Christopher Bedford, director of Baltimore's Museum of Art
Saturday, 15 December 2018
Reading list, 15 December 2018
If this year has a theme, it's decolonising museums:
DR Congo to request restitution of works from former coloniser Belgium - The Art Newspaper
Belgium’s Africa Museum Had a Racist Image. Can It Change That? - New York Times
New gallery will be first in a Smithsonian museum to focus on U.S. Latino experience - Washington Post
Senegal unveils China-funded Museum of Black Civilisations - AfricaNews
The Field Museum's Native North American Hall starts to ask who it represents - Chicago Reader
Matariki Williams, Oceania As a Contact Zone, and the Myth of Museum Universalism, The Pantograph Punch
Nicholas Thomas, Should colonial art be returned home? - Financial Times
DR Congo to request restitution of works from former coloniser Belgium - The Art Newspaper
Belgium’s Africa Museum Had a Racist Image. Can It Change That? - New York Times
New gallery will be first in a Smithsonian museum to focus on U.S. Latino experience - Washington Post
Senegal unveils China-funded Museum of Black Civilisations - AfricaNews
The Field Museum's Native North American Hall starts to ask who it represents - Chicago Reader
Matariki Williams, Oceania As a Contact Zone, and the Myth of Museum Universalism, The Pantograph Punch
Nicholas Thomas, Should colonial art be returned home? - Financial Times
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