maeve: thursday june 9th
I had therapy this morning, so I missed the aborted attempt at piloting our interview questions. In the library, I worked on my missing blog posts and the meta narrative, writing up a lot of the information I read last night. Around 3:30, Lara, Isabella, and I decided to meet in the cafe and discuss our game plan for getting our evaluation project up to the Penn's standards. We need to write a mission statement, which will probably just be an adaptation of the research objectives Monique already gave us. We also need to clarify exactly how many surveys we're doing: we have to fill out their forms for all of our preliminary research, so the mission statement for that will include determining what more we need to ask about visitor's perceptions of Africa. It's a bit unclear whether we're evaluating visitor's perceptions of the current exhibit or focusing on what they'd like to see done in the future--is this a front-end or back-end evaluation? Where will we be asking the questions? I'm inclined towards lurking in/around the exhibit, but the flowing nature of it might make that difficult, and it might be easier to ask people whether they've seen the African galleries in a different location. I still don't have a very good grasp on the path the average visitor takes through the museum (or the one that the museum wants them to take). We decided we're definitely doing evaluations on Fridays, which Jessica suggested, but we wanted to figure out whether we'll be coming in one at a time on weekends before picking days to interview people. Isabella made a Google Doc so we can continue collaborating on questions over the weekend. We also made plans to meet up at the Odunde festival this Sunday and a GoogleDoc for figuring out what we'll say to people there!
I'm writing this from the Bryn Mawr library, and on my train home, I started reading "Mining the Museum: Artists Look at Museums, Museums Look at Themselves" by Lisa G. Corrin. This article has been particularly exciting because it's pretty much exactly what I'm trying to make my thesis about: the role of the artist and the curator in society, the importance of museums to our idea of art, and interventions into that system acknowledging curation as a form of self-representation! One of my favorite points was that "since Duchamp signed an ordinary urinal, Fountain (1917), the uneasy relationship between art and its contextual frame has been a distinct subject matter for artists" (3). The PMA has an extensive collection of Duchamp's works, including a replica of Fountain, and last summer they had a whole exhibit on him--one that barely acknowledged the radical, anti-art museum sentiments propelling most of his work. A century after he turned art on its head, we're still struggling to get museums to change their practices in any lasting manner. The article also mentions a number of artists whose works have "illustrated how context is inseparable from the meaning of an art work and the meaning of the museum experience itself" (4), something clearly missing at the PMA's Creative Africa (but not from many of its other galleries!). One intervention that intrigued me was Andrea Fraser's "tours" of museum security systems at the New Museum of Contemporary Art's Damaged Goods: Desire and the Economy of the Object (1986). Fred Wilson, the main subject of the article (and my new artistic hero), did something similar with his Guarded View, a piece consisting of black mannequins in museum security uniforms on a display platform. At another exhibit a year later, he introduced himself to a group of docents he was supposed to give a tour to, went and changed into a security uniform, and then met them at a different location in the museum--"he was suddenly invisible to them; the docents paced in the galleries anxiously looking for him, walking by him time and time again" (10). Last summer, Dani and I spent a lot of time with the security guards in the Perelman building, more than half of whom were black. Some of them complained to us that they weren't allowed to have their phones out--but then showed us the spots where they couldn't be seen by security cameras, making clear that even if they were invisible to visitors, they were under close surveillance. It was also common to refer to the main building of the museum as "the big house," a euphemism slaves used for the master's house on a plantation. I remember we were struck by this racially charged language, and I'm glad that artists are exploring all of the facets of the constructed museum environment. I ended up reading the rest of the "Mining the Museum" article alongside the catalogue of it that Monique sent us, so I'll address that fascinating exhibit in my Tuesday blog post.
I also read "The Art of Anthropology: Questioning Contemporary Art in Ethnographic Display" by Haidy Geismar, which dealt with the fascinating relationships that have been established between contemporary art and anthropology in museums. She is concerned that anthropologists have too hastily jumped to art as a kind of cure-all intervention without critically unpacking their assumptions about art and what contemporary art even is. She stresses, "rather than using "art" as a cipher for form, and "artifact" as a cipher for contextual information, it is important to remember that, to a large extent, the categories of art and ethnographic object have been made together through the representational practices and technologies that seem only to display them" (186). Contemporary art is a socially constructed set of practices, not something that somehow stands magically outside the museological system stripping objects of their lived meanings. She spends a lot of time on the architecture of the Musée du Quai Branly and the National Museum of the American Indian, analyzing how the two museums use contemporary architecture quite differently to display their collections. While we can't really do anything about the Penn's architecture (and I already somewhat analyzed it in my metanarrative), something Geismar said about the QB's use of temporary contemporary exhibitions jumped out at me: "for the most part, such exhibitions are perceived as a supplemental aesthetic for the museum's overarching representational strategy which itself is to use display strategies drawn from a lexicon of postmodernism architectural theory (of visual juxtaposition, architectural encompassment, bright color, and labyrinthine directionalities) to contain, control, even overpower cultural difference" (188). Though this could accurately be describing the Penn, it reminded me more of how the PMA used a set of temporary exhibits to essentially pat themselves on the back for including African art. Often, exhibits like "Creative Africa" and "Imagine Africa" feel supplemental instead of representing the real goals of the museum. Geismar's description of the NMAI summed up everything I love about that museum--they invert the typical relationship, "insisting on an indigenous aesthetic as exhibition strategy as well as subject of the display" (189). Radically changing the way we exhibit things--by bringing in indigenous curators, not just consultants/artists/focus groups--could be the answer to the question museums just don't seem to want to hear. Geismar is mainly arguing that these museums represent a new, more synthesized museology sitting outside the boundary of art museum or anthropology museum, which is incredibly interesting and incredibly unhelpful for our context.
I was excited to read this article because last summer when I first visited the Native American Voices gallery, I'd noticed a contemporary ceramic work on display next to centuries-old pieces without much explanation as to what the relationship was between the pieces. There are obviously other contemporary art pieces within that exhibit as well, and I'd been excited about how the museum was using contemporary Native voices to unsettle the anthropological gaze, but something bothered me about the way it was incorporated into the exhibit (and, of course, that the PMA continues to basically ignore Native American artists of any time period). I wasn't able to put my finger on it, but Geismar's article helped me figure it out. Contemporary art interventions into ethnographic collections suffer from a variety of problems: some merely subject ethnographic objects to a more "art world" interpretation, others (usually performance artists/installations) present the problem of visitors not necessarily knowing the difference between contemporary art and the traditional displays they're critiquing. Geismar compares two exhibits which invited artists into anthropology museums at the Cambridge museum and the Weltkulturen, the first of which she approves of, while the second she sees as much more problematic. Of the weaker exhibit, she notes that it "risks locating art practices out of time in an endless contemporary and the ethnographic objects out of time in a weaker traditional past that is infinitely recodable" (200), an observation that reminded me of my issue with NAV. Even though each artwork/artifact is dated, the inclusion of a 2005 ceramic work alongside a centuries-old pot without actually drawing any connection between them doesn't feel different from the rather haphazard grouping of curiosity cabinets. The contemporary art pieces are barely explained, presented as though they are part of an art gallery, when they're actually works reacting to societal systems, expectations, and practices that are perfect fodder for an anthropological exhibit. They destabilize the idea of an anthropology museum being separate from an art history museum, but the exhibit doesn't really reflect that.
I'm writing this from the Bryn Mawr library, and on my train home, I started reading "Mining the Museum: Artists Look at Museums, Museums Look at Themselves" by Lisa G. Corrin. This article has been particularly exciting because it's pretty much exactly what I'm trying to make my thesis about: the role of the artist and the curator in society, the importance of museums to our idea of art, and interventions into that system acknowledging curation as a form of self-representation! One of my favorite points was that "since Duchamp signed an ordinary urinal, Fountain (1917), the uneasy relationship between art and its contextual frame has been a distinct subject matter for artists" (3). The PMA has an extensive collection of Duchamp's works, including a replica of Fountain, and last summer they had a whole exhibit on him--one that barely acknowledged the radical, anti-art museum sentiments propelling most of his work. A century after he turned art on its head, we're still struggling to get museums to change their practices in any lasting manner. The article also mentions a number of artists whose works have "illustrated how context is inseparable from the meaning of an art work and the meaning of the museum experience itself" (4), something clearly missing at the PMA's Creative Africa (but not from many of its other galleries!). One intervention that intrigued me was Andrea Fraser's "tours" of museum security systems at the New Museum of Contemporary Art's Damaged Goods: Desire and the Economy of the Object (1986). Fred Wilson, the main subject of the article (and my new artistic hero), did something similar with his Guarded View, a piece consisting of black mannequins in museum security uniforms on a display platform. At another exhibit a year later, he introduced himself to a group of docents he was supposed to give a tour to, went and changed into a security uniform, and then met them at a different location in the museum--"he was suddenly invisible to them; the docents paced in the galleries anxiously looking for him, walking by him time and time again" (10). Last summer, Dani and I spent a lot of time with the security guards in the Perelman building, more than half of whom were black. Some of them complained to us that they weren't allowed to have their phones out--but then showed us the spots where they couldn't be seen by security cameras, making clear that even if they were invisible to visitors, they were under close surveillance. It was also common to refer to the main building of the museum as "the big house," a euphemism slaves used for the master's house on a plantation. I remember we were struck by this racially charged language, and I'm glad that artists are exploring all of the facets of the constructed museum environment. I ended up reading the rest of the "Mining the Museum" article alongside the catalogue of it that Monique sent us, so I'll address that fascinating exhibit in my Tuesday blog post.
I also read "The Art of Anthropology: Questioning Contemporary Art in Ethnographic Display" by Haidy Geismar, which dealt with the fascinating relationships that have been established between contemporary art and anthropology in museums. She is concerned that anthropologists have too hastily jumped to art as a kind of cure-all intervention without critically unpacking their assumptions about art and what contemporary art even is. She stresses, "rather than using "art" as a cipher for form, and "artifact" as a cipher for contextual information, it is important to remember that, to a large extent, the categories of art and ethnographic object have been made together through the representational practices and technologies that seem only to display them" (186). Contemporary art is a socially constructed set of practices, not something that somehow stands magically outside the museological system stripping objects of their lived meanings. She spends a lot of time on the architecture of the Musée du Quai Branly and the National Museum of the American Indian, analyzing how the two museums use contemporary architecture quite differently to display their collections. While we can't really do anything about the Penn's architecture (and I already somewhat analyzed it in my metanarrative), something Geismar said about the QB's use of temporary contemporary exhibitions jumped out at me: "for the most part, such exhibitions are perceived as a supplemental aesthetic for the museum's overarching representational strategy which itself is to use display strategies drawn from a lexicon of postmodernism architectural theory (of visual juxtaposition, architectural encompassment, bright color, and labyrinthine directionalities) to contain, control, even overpower cultural difference" (188). Though this could accurately be describing the Penn, it reminded me more of how the PMA used a set of temporary exhibits to essentially pat themselves on the back for including African art. Often, exhibits like "Creative Africa" and "Imagine Africa" feel supplemental instead of representing the real goals of the museum. Geismar's description of the NMAI summed up everything I love about that museum--they invert the typical relationship, "insisting on an indigenous aesthetic as exhibition strategy as well as subject of the display" (189). Radically changing the way we exhibit things--by bringing in indigenous curators, not just consultants/artists/focus groups--could be the answer to the question museums just don't seem to want to hear. Geismar is mainly arguing that these museums represent a new, more synthesized museology sitting outside the boundary of art museum or anthropology museum, which is incredibly interesting and incredibly unhelpful for our context.
I was excited to read this article because last summer when I first visited the Native American Voices gallery, I'd noticed a contemporary ceramic work on display next to centuries-old pieces without much explanation as to what the relationship was between the pieces. There are obviously other contemporary art pieces within that exhibit as well, and I'd been excited about how the museum was using contemporary Native voices to unsettle the anthropological gaze, but something bothered me about the way it was incorporated into the exhibit (and, of course, that the PMA continues to basically ignore Native American artists of any time period). I wasn't able to put my finger on it, but Geismar's article helped me figure it out. Contemporary art interventions into ethnographic collections suffer from a variety of problems: some merely subject ethnographic objects to a more "art world" interpretation, others (usually performance artists/installations) present the problem of visitors not necessarily knowing the difference between contemporary art and the traditional displays they're critiquing. Geismar compares two exhibits which invited artists into anthropology museums at the Cambridge museum and the Weltkulturen, the first of which she approves of, while the second she sees as much more problematic. Of the weaker exhibit, she notes that it "risks locating art practices out of time in an endless contemporary and the ethnographic objects out of time in a weaker traditional past that is infinitely recodable" (200), an observation that reminded me of my issue with NAV. Even though each artwork/artifact is dated, the inclusion of a 2005 ceramic work alongside a centuries-old pot without actually drawing any connection between them doesn't feel different from the rather haphazard grouping of curiosity cabinets. The contemporary art pieces are barely explained, presented as though they are part of an art gallery, when they're actually works reacting to societal systems, expectations, and practices that are perfect fodder for an anthropological exhibit. They destabilize the idea of an anthropology museum being separate from an art history museum, but the exhibit doesn't really reflect that.
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