The seminar / the conference with international guests examine practices, positions and perspectives of “museums and exhibitions as social spaces.” After an introductory event, this will take place along the thematic focuses “Museums and Exhibitions as Contact and Conflict Zones,” “Artistic and Curatorial Practice as Political Intervention” and “Exhibiting Institutions as Critical Authority.” The extent to which museums, exhibiting institutions and exhibitions can function as possibility spaces for democratic negotiation processes will be put up for debate.
What is actually a museum? It appeared relatively clear for a long period of time that, regardless of whether a museum is operated privately or publicly, whether it is dedicated to art, history or natural history, it “acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment”. This is how the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has defined the institution since 2007. Since 2016, the ICOM has been working on a new definition. Even with the new proposal made in 2019 – which defines museums as polyphonic spaces advocating for social justice, acting in a democratizing way and contributing to planetary wellbeing – the international discussion on what a museum is and what it should be in the future has by no means abated. Recently, the debate on the decolonization of collecting and exhibiting institutions has shown that dominant, (neo)colonial narratives are still being (re)produced and determine the majority of the epistemological foundations on which knowledge orders of exhibiting institutions are based.
Against this background, the seminar “Current Discourses on Exhibiting and Museum Education” with international guests examine practices, positions and perspectives of “museums and exhibitions as social spaces.” After an introductory event, this will take place along the thematic focuses “Museums and Exhibitions as Contact and Conflict Zones,” “Artistic and Curatorial Practice as Political Intervention” and “Exhibiting Institutions as Critical Authority.”
The extent to which museums, exhibiting institutions and exhibitions can function as possibility spaces for democratic negotiation processes will be put up for debate. How can museums become polyphonic spaces that lend a voice to previously marginalized positions and make invisible stories visible, while subjecting the foundations of their own knowledge orders to renegotiation? How can exhibitions, with regard to their interplay of diverse actors, artworks and objects with architecture, displays, curatorial concepts, and educational programs, be grasped as experimental setups in social space? To what extent can and should exhibiting institutions go beyond their traditional functions, self-understanding and expertise and become actors of political democratization and social inclusion?
Dates
Museum und Ausstellung als gesellschaftlicher Raum
29.4.2022, 10–17h
Toni-Areal, Kunstraum, 5.K12, Ebene 5
mit
Léontine Meijer-van Mensch
Absolvent:innen des Master Art Education Curatorial Studies:
Katrin Bauer, Jonas Bürgi, Julian Denzler, Yulia Fisch, Martina Oberprantacher
Museen und Ausstellungen als Kontakt- und Konfliktzonen
13.5.2022, 10–17h
Toni-Areal, Raum 4.T09, Ebene 4
mit
Anna Greve
Bonaventure Ndikung
Ismahan Wayah
Künstlerische und kuratorische Praxis als politische Intervention
20.5.2022, 10–17h
Toni-Areal, Raum 4.T09, Ebene 4
mit
Kathleen Bühler
Forensic Architecture
RELAX (chiarenza & hauser & co)
Ausstellungsinstitutionen als kritische Instanz
27.5.2022, 10–17h
Toni-Areal, Raum 4.T09, Ebene 4
mit Binna Choi
Clémentine Deliss
Maria Lind