CfP: Cultures of Curating: Curatorial Practices and the Production of Meaning c. 1650-2000

The 2012 conference of the Museums and Galleries History Group, to be held at the University of Lincoln 12-13 July 2012

Call for papers

While museum history now acknowledges the constructed nature of the museum narrative, and maintains that museum work such as cataloguing, conserving and displaying is not neutral, but actually produces meaning, relatively little work has examined the ways in which curatorial practices have developed, and the specific consequences for museums. Display has attracted most of the work that has been done, but ‘behind the scenes’ activities have not been investigated in such depth. We seek submissions which investigate any aspect of the developing work of the curator, from creating an acquisitions policy, to labelling and documentation, to publicity work, as we wish to explore curating as both craft and profession. We also invite contributors to consider how curatorial practices constituted the museum object, and attempted to produce or suppress certain meanings for museum objects; and how such practices formed particular relationships between curators and other museum figures such as donors and visitors. We are interested in submissions which consider a wide variety of periods and places, and all types of curating, from fine art to science.

Confirmed keynote speaker: Dr Sam Alberti, Director, Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.

We invite papers on themes such as:

How curators were trained, and how they understood their role

Cataloguing and museum documentation

Acquisition – the role of the curator

Conservation and storage

Display and interpretation

How and why curatorial practices changed

The role of place and space in shaping curatorial practices

Curatorial practices, disciplines and discourses of knowledge

Curatorial practices and relationships with the wider public

We also invite session proposals. Session proposals should include a brief outline of the session (250 words) as well as three abstracts (300 words max. each) for the proposed session. For session proposals, please indicate who will chair the session.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to chair@mghg.org or Kate Hill (khill@lincoln.ac.uk)

Closing date for proposals: 1 February 2012

(Please note, all those attending and giving papers will need to pay the registration fee)

Symposium: Cultures of Decolonisation, c.1945-1970

Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, Senate House
Wednesday, 30 May 2012

Sketch for proposed British Guiana court, Commonwealth Institute. James Gardner, c. 1961. Design Archives, University of Brighton

Keynote Speaker: Dr Bill Schwarz, Queen Mary, University of London

This symposium will bring together scholars with an interest in the cultural practices, performances and material cultures of decolonisation, c.1945-1970.

While the problems of ‘empire’ and ‘the postcolonial’ have come under increasing scrutiny in the humanities and social sciences in recent years, and debate about the political and economic processes of decolonisation is well established, the cultural sites, spaces and social practices of this process in the middle years of the twentieth century have often been overlooked.

Yet new scholarship is beginning to point to the attention that the literary, visual and built environment paid to political, economic and social change in this period. In addition, the roles of individuals and institutions in cultural practices and performances of decolonisation are now drawing critical attention from a variety of fields. This symposium will bring together scholars from history, art and design history, cultural geography, literature, museum studies, architecture and other cultural fields to further explore these topics with regard to decolonisation between 1945 and 1970.

We invite contributions which examine aspects of cultural engagements with decolonisation. Papers may consider the peoples, sites, materials and practices of emerging and newly independent nations, as well as the processes of decolonisation as enacted in Europe. This event will lend new insights into debates about the contested nature of decolonisation, and into the impact of cultural practices on socio-political processes.

Entrance Hall, the Royal Commonwealth Society, 1959 RCS II (e) 6 http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/rcs/modernCommonwealth/

Papers might focus on:

Cultural institutions and their reactions to and engagements with decolonisation
Amateurs, professionals and enthusiasts in decolonisation
Imperial knowledges, materials and collections, and their place in a decolonising world
Specific media as arenas for political exchange
Cultural sites of independence and decolonisation
Visual and performance cultures of decolonisation
Decolonising lives
Networks of decolonisation

Please send abstracts of 250 words or expressions of interest to Dr Ruth Craggs, St Mary’s University College (craggsr@smuc.ac.uk) and Dr Claire Wintle, University of Brighton (c.wintle@brighton.ac.uk) by 30 January 2012.

Symposium Website:
http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research/research-conferences/cultures-of-decolonisation-1945-1970

Supported by the Institute for Commonwealth Studies, University of London; School of Humanities, University of Brighton, and St Mary’s University College.

Research Project: Artefacts of Encounter

Artefacts of Encounter, a UK-based research project sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), is now half-way through its 3-year duration.

The project, led by Nicholas Thomas and Amiria Salmond and hosted by the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, examines the legacy of early European voyages into Polynesia (1765-1840), focusing on collections of Pacific artefacts as primary evidence of these cross-cultural encounters and ensuing transformations.

Study visits have already been carried out to document and study relevant material in UK, French, German, Estonian, Russian and other European collections, and more trips are planned for 2012, to Norway, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, the US and New Zealand. 

Research findings are being incorporated into KIWA, a closed-access internet-based platform for collaborative collections-based research. We would be delighted to hear from researchers with a specialist interest in Polynesian material culture who would be interested in joining us as Affiliated Researchers (our current expanded team includes Anne Salmond, Jenny Newell, Patricia Wallace, Deidre Brown and Wonu Veys).

We would also be pleased to hear from museum curators responsible for Polynesian material and whose institution wishes to collaborate with project research.

A workshop will be held next year to present preliminary findings and to showcase the digital aspect of our work.

Please visit our website http://maa.cam.ac.uk/aofe/ for more information about the project, including news of our latest discoveries!

The William Fagg Lecture 2011

ISLANDERS: EMPIRE AND ART IN THE PACIFIC

BP Lecture Theatre, British Museum
Friday 9th December 2011
18.15-19.30

 
Nicholas Thomas
Professor of Historical Anthropology, and Director Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge

Following the voyages of Captain Cook, an extraordinary range of encounters took place in the islands of the Pacific. While the European intrusion was notoriously destructive, commerce and empire enabled Islanders to travel and interact in new ways. This lecture traces Pacific experiences of empire through the lens of some of the great and innovative art works of the nineteenth century, including objects in the collections of the British Museum.

The lecture will be followed by a reception

Tickets £5, concessions and members £3.

Review: Objects of Religion

By Sue Giles
Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives

Whatever one’s view of religion or relics, the exhibition Treasures of Heaven: saints, relics and devotion in medieval Europe at the British Museum was a feast of extraordinary art and craft from the middle ages, from Rome via 10^th century Byzantium to 15^th century France. It included stunning Limoges enamel reliquary boxes and gold and silver reliquary statues. Looking at the objects was one thing, watching the visitors another.

A man I thought was cleaning sticky marks off the glass of one case was, I realised, making the sign of the cross repeatedly – possibly with his mobile ‘phone in his hand - was he filming his actions? A woman came up to the same case and held her hand flat on the glass, channelling the relic. Near another case, I was aware that standing behind me were a man saying his rosary and a woman whispering prayers. 

Alas, no one else can go and watch the visitors – I visited on the last afternoon of the exhibition and the relics have been returned to their respective museums and churches. For me, the exhibition raised questions of belief  – why do people believe that someone thought to save the Virgin Mary’s breast milk all those centuries ago? If all the pieces of the true cross were put together, how big would the cross be? Was it faith that created relics, or economic and political need?

The Kandy Temple elephant carrying the Tooth relic,
full moon, August 2007

That said, the exhibition also made me think about why and how different religions come up with similar practices and ideas. Several of the reliquaries contained the toothes of saints. These relic would have been wrapped and placed in a reliquary casket, to be carried in procession under a panoply. 

During the Kandy perahera in Sri Lanka, the Temple of the Tooth is represented in the parade of the four Kandy temples, processing around the town every night for a month. On a few nights, the Tooth relic actually carried on the back of an elephant, wrapped in a reliquary box, and paraded under a panoply held up on poles by six men. Other nights the elephant parades with an empty palanquin. 

On most nights people just watch the elephant pass by. When he carries the Tooth relic, they stand and bow.... 

Religion must be the new black – as Treasures of Heaven closed, Infinitas Gracias: Mexican miracle paintings opened at the Wellcome Collection. This is another fascinating exhibition about religious belief, showing over 100 examples of Mexican votive paintings – created to record of an event where the dedicatee believed that only the intervention of Jesus, Mary or a saint had saved them or their family from death by cancer, amputation, bandits, drowning, electrocution, car crashes, heart attacks....

The small paintings on tinplate are in a naive style. In some, the space is full with the scene of the accident, the saint and the dedication, in others the rectangular ‘canvas’ is very empty – perhaps a huge room with a chequered floor, a small bed in one corner and the saint hovering in another.

The paintings are arranged as art works in a single line around the walls of the gallery – but at the entrance a display of reproductions shows how they would be seen by the faithful, with hundreds nailed up cheek by jowl to cover the walls of the church.

One wall in the exhibition holds a collection of contemporary ex-votos from the church of Real de Catorce, an old silver mining community. People rarely commission a painting now, but anyone can pin up a prayer or a photograph, a child’s baby-grow or a wedding dress, all dedicated to St Anthony as thanks for anything from getting a job to falling pregnant or recovering from illness.

A Sacred Heart milagro or ex-voto offering, 
purchased Mexico City, 1991 

Anyone can present a milagro or little silver or brass pendant of what they need help with, be it their eyesight, their dog or their car, and at the church of Real de Catorce these are used to create decorate the walls.

Visitors to these exhibitions fall into different camps: those who believe in the power of the things on display, those with faith but not in Catholicism, and those who see the objects as art, and wonder why people believe a saint would hear their prayer and help them.

Alongside Infinatas Gracias at the Wellcome is another exhibition, Charmed Life: the solace of objects, an artist’s interpretation of a collection of amulets made by the Edwardian folklorist Edward Lovett. The juxtaposition of votive offerings from Mexico with fabric-covered horseshoes to protect against nightmares and coral hands to ward off the evil eye is an interesting one – in both cases the objects seem to be created by belief.

Treasures of Heaven has closed, but Infinitas Gracias and Charmed Life at the Wellcome Collection are open until 26 February 

Folklore Society Lecture: Michael Rosen

Conference: Cultural Equalities Now

Friday 9 December 09.00–17.00
Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum

Where next for equalities and diversity in the culture and arts sectors?

The policy and funding landscape has changed dramatically in recent times and the full implications of this are still not yet clear for the culture and arts sectors.

This conference is for practitioners, policy makers and researchers interested in diversity in the cultural sector. The talks will focus on keeping the access and diversity agenda alive as budgets shrink, who funds and supports this work now, the opportunities and threats of the Big Society and Localism, the effect of the new Equalities Act on different organisations, and changing approaches to inclusion in the sector. 

£45 first 40 tickets
£55 standard price

Conference fees have been subsidised by the British Museum to help you attend.

For more information