C INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE XXXXX U RATOR I UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN MAY 26-27 2016 AL

C H ALLEN G E S CONTENT

Welcome 3

Programme May 26 4

Programme May 27 6

Abstracts, Keynotes 8

Abstracts, Speakers 10

Biographies, Keynotes 29

Biographies, Speakers and Moderators 30

Biographies, Organizers 35

Venues 36

The Conference Curatorial Challenges May 26-27 2016 is organized as part of the Research Network for Studies in the Curatorial artsandculturalstudies.ku.dk/research/focus/studiesinthecuratorial

The Research Network for Studies in the Curatorial is funded by

Project Managers Malene Vest Hansen, Associate Professor, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen Anne Folke Henningsen, Associate Professor, the SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen

Conference Organizers Anne Gregersen, Postdoc, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen Malene Vest Hansen, Associate Professor, Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen Anne Folke Henningsen, Associate Professor, the SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen Sofie Normann Christensen, Student Assistant

Photo on cover: Detail from Sundholmssamlingen/The Sundholm Collection 2015, installation by Camilla Nørgård Layout: Tone Thoresen, www.koalitionen.dk Print: Vester Kopi

2 WELCOME

We welcome you all – scholars from museums and academia, and freelance and museum curators who are working and thinking in the fields of art, cultural history, and museums – to the Copenhagen confe- rence Curatorial Challenges. Our aim with this conference is to strengthen an interdisciplinary exchange in order to explore the challenges of curating in contemporary society – and what curating could possibly challenge.

The exhibition is a primary site of cultural exchange; as part spectacle, part socio-historical event, and part structuring device, exhibitions establish and administer meanings of art and cultural heritage. Temporary exhibitions are increasing in cultural importance, while the traditional role of museums as institutions of Bildung are transforming—even museums with well-known and established collections follow the call for ever-changing exhibitions. Understanding the changing role of curating in this process calls for new research: What constitutes the curatorial? What sort of knowledge is produced in and through curatorial strategies? How do curatorial strategies inform museums in contemporary society and what sort of con- servative, or perhaps critical and transformative potentials can be traced in exhibition cultures?

The conference addresses these important questions in relation to four key topics: t exhibitions as a form of research t artistic and curatorial interventions t participatory practices and strategies t curating within the changing role of museums as Bildung institutions

We have invited five distinguished keynote speakers, who provide the foundation of the conference. How- ever, because we also wanted to establish a platform for rigorous scholarly exchange in thematic parallel sessions, we included the open call for papers. As you can see in the programme on the following pages, the selected papers cover a range of promising investigations into curating within the four key conference topics.

The conference is organized as part of the Research Network for Studies in the Curatorial funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research. Through a series of small seminars and exploratory work- shops, the network participants have started an interdisciplinary dialogue. We hope that this conference will prove to both widen and deepen questions, reflections, and insights into curatorial challenges.

Malene Vest Hansen, Anne Folke Henningsen, and Anne Gregersen

3 PROGRAMME

THURSDAY MAY 26

9:00 Registration and coffee

Conference Auditorium 22.0.11

9:45 Welcome: Malene Vest Hansen and Anne Folke Henningsen

10:00 Donald Preziosi: Curatorship as Bildungsroman

11:00 Wera Grahn: Intersectionality and Change: Challenges of the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD)

12:00 Lunch

13:00 Parallel sessions I (each session: 3 x 30 min)

Exhibitions as Research I Room: 21.0.19 Moderator: Irene Campolmi t Marie Laurberg: The Museum as Generator, or: What Can the Single Artist Retrospective Learn from the Topical Exhibition? t Flavia Frigeri: The Challenges of Research Driven Exhibitions t Mattias Bäckström: Building Content with Exhibitions – about Essayistic Research

Curating within the Changing Role of Museums as Bildung Institutions I Room: 21.1.15 Moderator: Peter Bjerregaard t Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer: Images as Visual Sources: Representing the Former Danish West Indies t Jakob Ingemann Parby: Rethinking the Urban History Museum – Challenges and Possibilities in Curating the New Museum of Copenhagen t Nivi Christensen: The Implied Truth in Curating Greenlandic Art

Participatory Practices and Strategies I Room: 21.1.21 Moderator: Frida Hastrup t Johan Kjærulff Rasmussen: Mobilizing Participation at the Museum of Copenhagen t Kirstine Møller: Nuuk Museum: A Case Study on Public Participation in Exhibition Making and Heritage Management t Mette Boritz: What Matters to Young People? The Case of the White Busses at the National Museum of Copenhagen

14:30 Coffee break

4 14:45 Parallel sessions II (each session: 2 or 3 x 30 min)

Exhibitions as Research II Room: 21.0.19 Moderator: Masha Chlenova t Irene Campolmi: The ‘Aesth-Ethics’ of the 21st Century Art Museums. Practices of Ethics through Curatorial Research t Sabine Dahl Nielsen: Multi-sited Curating as a Critical Mode of Knowledge Production t Kristian Handberg: Multiple Modernism: New Globalized Framings of the Post War Era in the Recent Exhibitions After Year Zero and The World Goes Pop

Curating within the Changing Role of Museums as Bildung Institutions II Room: 21.1.15 Moderator: Ida Brændholt Lundgaard t Margareta von Oswald: “Object Biographies“ – Addressing the Challenges Facing Ethnographic Collections in Europe t Mathias Danbolt: Exhibition Addresses: The Production of Publics in Exhibiting Danish Colonial History t Ahu Antmen: Curating the Nude in Istanbul: Some Curatorial Challenges

Artistic and Curatorial Interventions I Room: 21.1.21 Moderator: Lotten Gustafsson Reinius t Trine Friis Sørensen: Commissioning as a Mode of Inquiry t Livia Dubon: Artists Working with Archives: Old Story, New Participatory Narratives. The Case Study of the Negotiating Amnesia Project in the Alinari’s Archive t Hanne Hammer Stien: Overcoming the Divide between Art and Cultural History: A Turn towards Photographs and Art within Cultural History Museums

Participatory Practices and Strategies II Room: 21.1.47 Moderator: Camilla Jalving t Cyril A. Santos: The Lumad Mindanao Exhibition in the National Museum of the Philippines: Encountered Challenges and Negotiations in Curating Ethnographic Collections t Luise Reitstätter: It’s a Tricky Job. The Profession of Curating and the Problem of Populism

16:15 Coffee break

Conference Auditorium 22.0.11

16:45 – 17:45 Simon Sheikh: Curating and Research

19:00 Dinner at Copenhagen Admiral Hotel, Toldbodgade 24-28, Copenhagen K (Pre-registration required)

5 PROGRAMME

FRIDAY MAY 27

9:30 Coffee

Conference Auditorium 22.0.11

10:00 Tone Hansen: The Use Value of Research in the Art Institution

11:15 Parallel Sessions III (each session: 3 x 30 min)

Exhibitions as Research III Room: 21.0.19 Moderator: Hans Dam Christensen t Barbara Mahlknecht: Curating the Archive. Feminist Politics, Curatorial Strategies t Lydie Delahaye: From Archive to Museum t Susanne Neubauer: Against the Grain of Neutralization: Exhibiting the Ephemeral as a Curatorial Production of Historical Knowledge

Curating within the Changing Role of Museums as Bildung Institutions III Room: 21.1.15 Moderator: Karin Tybjerg t Marie Riegels Melchior: Fashion Curation. Unpacking a New Discipline and Practice t Katharine Anderson and Jan Hadlaw: Re-imaging the Canada Science and Technology Museum t Henrik Holm: The Unchangeable Museum?

Artistic and Curatorial Interventions II Room: 21.1.21 Moderator: Sidsel Nelund t Anne Gregersen: The Artist as Curator: Interventions in Museum Collections t Lotten Gustafsson Reinius and Robert Willim: Possible Worlds and the Surrealities of Ethnography t Merete Sanderhoff: Mix it up! Old Collections Inspiring New Creativity and Learning

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Parallel Sessions IV (each session: 3 or 2 x 30 min)

Exhibitions as Research IV Room: 21.0.19 Moderator: Rasmus Kjærboe t Nathalia Brichet and Frida Hastrup: Mild Apocalypse. Exhibiting Interdisciplinary Research t Katarina Stenbeck: Exhibition as Tool t Karin Tybjerg: Curatorial Strategies for Exhibiting Epistemological Objects

Curating within the Changing Role of Museums as Bildung Institutions IV Room: 21.1.15 Moderator: Kristian Handberg t Masha Chlenova: Innovative, Polemical, Dogmatic: the Case of Soviet Experimental Museum Displays in 1930-32 t Sidsel Nelund: Congress, Forum, Hearing, Summit – on the Political Complexion of Exhibition Events t Franziska Brüggmann: Curatorial Challenges – Challenging Institutions. On the Relation between Critical Curating and Gallery Education in Contemporary Art Institutions

6 Participatory Practices and Strategies III Room: 21.1.47 Moderator: Mathias Danbolt t Camilla Jalving: Art and Affect – Participative Encounters in the Museum t Susan Kozel, Maria Engberg, and Temi Odumosu: Living Archives. Artistic Research Approaches to Mixed-Reality Curating

Artistic and Curatorial Interventions III Room: 21.1.21 Moderator: Marie Riegels Melchior t Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn and Michael Barrett: The Archive as Subject: Activism and Subjectivity in the Ethnographic Archive t Adam Bencard: Curating Gut Feelings – Building an Exhibition about Science in and as Process through Co-curation between Scientists, Artists and Museum Professionals t Judit Bodor: Exhibition Matters: Curatorial Challenges in Re-producing Ivor Davies’ Adam on St Agnes’ Eve

15:30 Coffee break

Conference Auditorium 22.0.11

16:00 Peter Bjerregaard: Exhibitions as Research: Curator as….

17:00 Concluding remarks

17:30 – 22:00 Closing party, canapés and drinks

7 ABSTRACTS KEYNOTES

Peter Bjerregaard This way of narrating the past has broadly been Exhibitions as Research: Curator as…. identified as the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) by the critical heritage scholar Laurajane Museums are institutionally divided into three Smith (2006). The AHD is conceived as an main areas of work: research, heritage manage- ‘official’ way of understanding heritage and is, ment, and public communication. Often these according to Smith, a particular way of under- three domains live lives of their own within the standing heritage which stresses the importance same institution, and even cause internal conflicts of expertise knowledge, and privileges the cultural as staff tend to disagree on which of the three recollection of a limited social stratum, including a domains should be given priority. The question limited scope on gender relations and representa- is, however, whether it is possible to think of the tions. three domains as integrated and therefore as the basis of a particular museal way of exploring the One way of challenging this AHD is to critically world. In terms of exhibitions we could phrase the analyse the curatorial practices from an inter- question as: is it possible to think of exhibitions sectional perspective (Crenshaw 1991, Lykke and the process of making them as research in 2010, Grahn 2011). This means to ask ques- and of itself? If so the making of an exhibition tions of how exhibitions configure and shape our should not merely reflect and disseminate estab- remembrance of the intertwined relations of social lished knowledge, but produce new knowledge in identities such as gender, class, age, sexuality, the process. dis/ability etc., which this presentation will do.

Such a take on exhibition making poses a chal- lenge to what it means to curate an exhibition Tone Hansen – maybe in particular in museums of cultural The Use Value of Research in the Art Institution history, which are the focus of this presentation. If exhibition making is not ‘just’ about making certain Where does research end, and where does an insights accessible and sensible to an audience, exhibition begin? Is there a moment when the but actually a matter of generating a kind of ‘re- institution leaves further investigations to the search surplus’, how do we go about that? What audience, and how can artistic research inform kind of competencies do we need? What kind of and influence an institutional understanding of a collaboration are we looking for? collection? The starting point for my presentation This presentation will consider recent sugges- is the conference’s question: what is the potential tions on the exhibition as experiment, research, of the exhibition format for presenting or even and exploration and on basis of accounts from conducting research? an upcoming exhibition on ‘COLLAPSE’ it will try to answer some of the questions raised in this The presentation will be based on the exhibition abstract. project “In Search of Matisse” at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in 2015, and the research con- ducted in the three-year period leading up to Wera Grahn the exhibition. The inquiry that led to and forms Intersectionality and Change: Challenges of the the basis of this presentation came from the Authorized Heritage Discourse (AHD) heirs of the Jewish art collector Paul Rosen- berg via the Art Loss Register (ALR). They The dominating discourses and configurations/ informed HOK that the painting Robe bleue representations within museums today are usually dans un fauteuil ocre (Blue dress in ochre arm- presenting the past in very reduces stereotyped chair) from 1937 by Henri Matisse, had been manners, especially in relation to gender. Even confiscated by the Nazis from Rosenberg’s if the contexts are different, the stories are often storage space during the invasion of France told in the same way they have always been during the Second World War, and that the narrated. painting had been missing since. HOK returned

8 the painting to the heirs after a two year long to the caring, organizing, managing, and mani- research period. festing of phenomena (whether material or virtual), it is at the same time stagecraft (organization in In parallel with HOK’s own investigations and space-time), dramaturgy (narration and articula- provenance research on the above mentioned tion), and rhetoric (the artistry of persuasion and painting as well as 19 other pre-war paintings, the reckoning with things). It is at base a mode HOK established a college of artists where the of critique. Curating, as a species of Bildungsro- ongoing research and the consequence of the man, problematizes clear or fixed distinctions findings were discussed, in order to broaden our between art and religion precisely by foreground- understanding of provenance. Celine Condorelli, ing the processes of knowledge-formation and Marianne Heier, Dag Erik Elgin, Matts Leiderstam, understanding. It is self-reflexive, calling attention and Michael Rakowitz were all invited to develop to the art, artistry, and artifice of social realities; a new work in parallel to our archival research, the fictions of factual representation. more than 16 months before the show opened. The conversations led us to investigate the An exhibition, then, is less a kind of thing of relationship between investigation of facts and which curating is a function, and more a way of research – both in terms of academic and the using things: a particular orientation toward poten- artistic understanding and use of the term, and tially any thing. A way of staging or framing events led us to broaden the definition of provenance and phenomena as significant in and for given research to include a consideration of the social social and cultural contexts. A method, in short, life of an artwork, i.e., an extensive examination of of making the visible legible so as to present, the social and societal constructs art has moved represent, manifest, or convey as significant or through, and the obliterating consequences of meaningful diverse values and beliefs for individu- contemporary looting for cultural existence. In als, groups, or communities. Exhibitions are in addition works by Hans Haacke, Hito Steyerl, addition dramatic occasions for seeing together in Ulay, and Mounira al Solh were included in the the same frame what may have had distinctly dif- exhibition. ferent origins, histories, functions, and purposes – juxtaposing philosophy, politics, law, rhetoric, The presentation will present and discuss each and religion. of the commissioned projects by the artists, as well as other relevant projects and open up for a dialogue of the relationship between research and Simon Sheikh exhibition. Curating and Research

How does one research for an exhibition, and Donald Preziosi how does research influence the exhibition itself? Curatorship as Bildungsroman Looking into the ideas of artistic research, my talk will attempt to establish some working definitions Curating is a very dangerous theatrical prac- of curatorial research, different methods and out- tice for it is the occasion for both construct- comes, and discuss if there is an entity we can ing and deconstructing the premises, promises, call a ’Research Exhibition.’ and consequences of what may be taken as social realities. It is one of a variety of ways of using things to think with, and is a practice with deep historical roots in Western antiquity. It not only precedes and is thereby more fundamental than what are currently distinguished as exhibi- tions, galleries, collections, or museums, but it is also not unique nor exclusive to any of those insti- tutions and professions. Whether curating refers

9 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

Ahu Antmen and abuse of the female body. The architectural Curating the Nude in Istanbul: Some Curatorial setting also functioned as shaping the curato- Challenges rial message that aimed at the awareness of the viewer’s voyeur position. Thus the psychological/ As an art historian interested in the ways in social/ideological aspects of engaging with the which a gendered history of artistic practice has nude and how, or if, the viewer’s gaze can ever unveiled the female body in both cultural and be controlled to see in a certain way were inter- political aspects within a process of modernity esting questions to ponder. in Turkey, I found myself challenged by both personal and social concerns when curating an exhibition of the nude in Turkish painting at the Mattias Bäckström Pera Museum in Istanbul in the autumn of 2015. Building Content with Exhibitions – about The exhibition, titled “Bare, Naked, Nude” Essayistic Research focused on the nude in Turkish painting as visual code that extends the aesthetic context, reflecting This presentation introduces some key findings the cultural conflicts between the opposing values from the scholarly monograph, which was of the traditional and the modern, the Islamic and completed in January 2016: Bygga innehåll med the secular. Tracing the first examples of the nude utställningar: Utställningsproduktion som forsk- to reveal not only the changing attitudes towards ningsprocess (Building content with exhibitions: Western forms of culture in the late Ottoman Exhibition production as research process; forth- period, but how the practice of this new visuality coming on Nordic Academic Press). Investigating presented a new artistic language for the articula- essayistic, exhibition-specific research – i.e. ‘the tion of the cultural values of modern, secular, exhibition essay’ – from theoretical, historical and republican Turkey in the 1920s, my aim was to practical perspectives, the monograph discusses be able to discuss in visual terms how the nude at length the knowledge production in such pro- stood at the intersection of the formation of both cesses through nine important aspects. a new country and a new artistic identity. This aspect of the exhibition, that is, the articulation These aspects include research concept, which through paintings, drawings and some photo- is investigated through the distinctions and ten- graphs of the questioning of a transformation of a sions between different research concepts in cultural mindset was interesting to experience, all museums of today and yesterday. Moreover, the the more so with the feedback from the local or monograph discusses research process through international audience touching on this exhibition texts about the knowing and the ignorant, anima- as a kind of resistance to the ongoing neo- tion and dialogical work, and group and individual Ottoman conservatism in Turkey today, in which work in self-managed adult education. The book the nude poses a threat to conservative values. also explores research method through discus- There was also the issue of belated modernity. sions about essayistic ways of forming, organ- The nudes that came together in this exhibition izing and presenting knowledge, but also through were in my eyes all interesting examples as reflec- discussions about art and scholarly knowledge. tions of not only cultural modernity, but of artistic Finally, among other aspects, the monograph modernity in Turkey. For many viewers, though, investigates research medium through various the artists included in the exhibition were mere historical and theoretical notions of exhibition emulators of Western styles. practices in art academies and industrial exhibi- tions, in addition to art museums and museums On a personal level, the nude as a problematic of cultural history. issue from a feminist stance was another and significant curatorial challenge for me. I felt the Some of the historical, theoretical and practical need to add a contemporary perspective to prob- arguments and concepts have been of value to lematize the nude, and used video art to convey the monographic study owing to their proximity the idea of how art history justifies the visual use to the concept of ‘exhibition essay’, others due

10 to their distance from the same concept. The worlds outside [...] is to change the direction of presentation at the conference highlights a couple thinking”? On the other hand, how do curators at of these aspects, more specifically by discussing museums of cultural history negotiate the episte- the following question: What are the essentials of mological space situated between subjective and ‘exhibition essay’, in comparison to neighboring objective knowledge production, which artistic concepts such as ‘the curatorial’, ‘museum re- interventions open for in the museum? Can the search’, ‘practical knowledge’, and ‘socio-cultural curatorial cope with explicit subjectivity? animation and action’?

Adam Bencard Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn Curating Gut Feelings – Building an Exhibition and Michael Barrett about Science in and as Process through Co- The Archive as Subject: Activism and Subjectivity curation between Scientists, Artists and Museum in the Ethnographic Archive Professionals

Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn was SWICH Artist This talk will discuss issues of co-curation, exhibi- in Residence at the Museum of Ethnography tions as research, and artistic collaborations in in Stockholm, September - November 2015. the context of the exhibition project Mind the Gut, SWICH - Sharing a World of Inclusion, Creativity winner of Bikubenfondens Vision 2015 award. and Heritage - is a four-year collaborative project involving ten European museums of Ethnography Mind the Gut investigates the strange history and and World Cultures, with the aim of creating dia- contemporary science of the relationship between logues on citizenship and belonging in contempo- mind and gut, between brain and stomach; rary Europe. Under the sub-theme "Stereoculture: between the nervous system in our brain and the Art of Listening" four European partner muse- the one in our belly; between what we eat and ums host residencies for artists/experts/curators who we are; between the microbes that populate to develop critical perspectives on their practices, our digestive tracts and our mental states and exhibitions and collections. disorders. It will investigate cultural and medical understandings of the gut-brain relationship as In Stockholm, Nguyễn investigated material a special case of the puzzle of the psychoso- culture and museological collecting practices. matic: the relationship between mind, body, and By examining photographic documentation of environment. Mind the Gut is an exhibition about ethnographic field trips, the artist questioned science in and as process, interested in the processes of collecting and knowledge produc- detective work of science; the weird, strange, tion based upon the extraction of Other's culture. and intangible aspects of investigating subjectivity Her entry point into the collection was through experimentally. her family's photographic album from French Indochina, which helped her to question and In order to mirror this thematic emphasis on contrast methods of knowledge production when process, the project is itself founded on a documentations pertain to the private or the museological experiment in co-curation between institutional spheres. scientists, artists and museum staff. Instead of curators making the exhibition with factual input During workshops with staff and invited audience from scientists and then commissioning artists to Nguyễn approached these contrasts and frictions make comment or critique after the exhibition is embedded in visual and textual conventions and complete, we will open up the exhibition process artifacts. On the one hand, should we understand from the start and invite a group of collaborators her approach as that of an ”activist archivist” – a access to the ‘total medium’ of the exhibition. concept proposed by theorist Mark Wigley – “one Through regular meetings and workshops, the who designs an archive whose purpose is to po- project will examine ways of using the exhibition lemically rearrange the standard perception of the medium to display, investigate, and invite audi-

11 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

ences to engage in science in and as a culturally formative archival installation, aiming to transcend embedded process. We will examine how artists, the limitations both of the customary display of scientists and curators relate to each other’s tangible remains as documentary evidence of ideas about what should be communicated when disappearing events and of re-enactments that we communicate about science and its cultural focus on liveness over the ‘multiplicity of material- contexts. The exhibition process itself will thus ity’ (Lillemose 2006) existing in performance. be research material, providing insights into the possibilities and pitfalls of co-curatorial. In the I will reflect on how the collaborative approach talk, I will discuss our preliminary thoughts on blurred the roles of artist and curator, thus how to design a curatorial process that explores questioning notions of curatorship and author- the potential of combining communication about ship in museums, and its potentially challenging how contemporary science works – the material, consequences for the future of the artwork in sensuous, and knowledge-producing qualities terms of its identity, collection and continuation. of research objects – and the opportunities of I will conclude by offering observations on the artistic methods and products. discourse of ‘the curatorial’ and curating as critical and creative practice in the context of traditional The paper is co-written by Assistant Professor institutions. Louise Whiteley, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen. Mette Boritz What Matters to Young People? The Case of Judit Bodor the White Busses at the National Museum of Exhibition matters: Curatorial Challenges in Re- Copenhagen producing Ivor Davies’ Adam on St Agnes’ Eve. How can museums create exhibitions that Over the past two decades, museums have motivate young people to take an interest in a begun responding to the challenges of address- 70-year old event that most of them have never ing the place of historical performance art within heard about? What makes an exhibition well- collections. While existing processes of acquisi- curated in a young person’s opinion, and does tion and conservation have expanded to encom- this differ from the views of other visitor groups? pass the temporal material base of these works, The paper presents results from research related issues surrounding these artworks’ identity and to The White Busses, a temporary exhibition at extant materiality as archive persist in the context The National Museum in Copenhagen about a of temporary exhibitions as curators confront large-scale rescue mission that took place at the the problem of keeping the integrity and logic of end of the Second World War. More than 17.000 performance-based artworks as changeable and prisoners were rescued from German concentra- experiential while adapting them to the conditions tion camps by The White Busses. of the museum. Planning the exhibition, focus group interviews In this paper I present an outcome from my with young people inspired the curators to experi- curatorial practice-based doctoral research into ment with the exhibition narrative, the way texts developing the exhibition Silent Explosion: Ivor were formulated, and how the exhibition was Davies and Destruction in Art (Amgueddfa Cymru designed. The intention was to encourage par- - National Museum Wales, Cardiff, 2015-2016). ticipation and reflection engaging multiple senses Informed by ‘curating in the expanded field’ I will as well as the intellect. Qualitative interviews outline an experiment I initiated in the museum conducted with visitors after seeing the exhibi- to exhibit one of Davies’ historical multimedia tion gave us an idea about not only how visitors performances, Adam on St Agnes’ Eve (1968) as experienced the exhibition, but also what matters a temporary archival installation. The experiment to the visitors when making cultural historical explored exhibiting historical performance as per- exhibitions.

12 Franziska Brüggmann tion and agency, thus answering to contemporary Curatorial Challenges – Challenging Institutions. curatorial challenges. On the Relation between Critical Curating and Gallery Education in Contemporary Art Institutions Irene Campolmi In an age where critique is both omnipresent The ‘Aesth-Ethics’ of the 21st Century Art and called for in regards to social, political and Museums Practices of Ethics through Curatorial cultural questions, it is hardly news that curato- Research rial practices have faced significant changes and expansion over the last decades. Critical In recent years, the core aesthetic domain of mod- approaches, embedded in continuously arising ern and contemporary art museums has switched and disappearing turns have taught curators to from exhibiting artworks into creating social impact. adapt to these ever-changing, flexible conditions. Ethics has replaced aesthetics as the main focus Furthermore, the blurred boundary between of the art museum. Modern and contemporary critically working curators and gallery educators art institutions are using exhibitions and public suggest that they have in fact internalised this programs’ initiatives as means to explore differ- curatorialization of critique, as Jens Hoffmann put ent practices of ethics while engaging with the it. They are aware of their own working conditions audiences and being aware of the contemporary and look critically at art institutions and museums events that influence society. The paper defines as grown, constructed apparatuses of power, as museum curatorial ethics as a way of thinking and Bildungsinstitutionen whose function is constantly behaving that is engaged with and shaped by being challenged. Transformation seems to be contingent events. Curatorial ethics is an approach on the agenda, expecting art institutions to follow and a means for modern and contemporary along as attested to, for instance, by an obser- art museums to characterize through curatorial vable format shift. Yet, curators and educators practice their social, cultural and aesthetic role as alike are conscious about the fine line between platforms for critical reflections, individual and col- disrupting and stabilizing dominant orders. lective cultivation, and politically organized ‘spaces of action’. At the same time, the art museum of the By adapting Carmen Mörsch’s description of the 21st century has opened its curatorial palette in the functions of art education as critical practice, I will direction of both discursive and immersive ways of develop an understanding of critical curating that curating exhibitions and collection displays. These is informed by practices of radical pedagogy. Fur- alternative and unconventional experiential models thermore, I will explore two exemplary strategies of curating result from different research approach- of this approach. On the one hand, the collective es and generate knowledge that is not measurable and grassroots democratic approach to program- on academic standards. What kind of knowledge ming in the neue gesellschaft für bildende kunst, is generated through exhibitions? How could we especially the format Mapping the commons – zur evaluate the outcome of this research? Curato- Lage der ngbk. This three-part workshop sets out rial research is described as a series of practices to reflect on the current education programme inspired by curatorial ethics and aims at exploring and borrows strategies from both game design alternative ways to give voice to the plurality of and performance. As a comparison I will present narratives, histories and representations inhabiting the format Inverse institution of the Flutgraben e.V. today’s art museums. that is working on building sustainable, solidary and collectively organized structures for running a project space. Masha Chlenova Innovative, Polemical, Dogmatic: the Case of With these two case studies, I will explore how Soviet Experimental Museum Displays in 1930-32 critical curating and gallery education may join forces to subvert traditional exhibition formats and Today’s art museums increasingly present their programme structures by creating spaces of ac- collections in the form of special exhibitions

13 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

– temporary and often polemical propositions – Nivi Christensen rather than in what used to be known as ‘perma- The Implied Truth in Curating Greenlandic Art nent displays,’ a seemingly universal unfolding of a teleological progression. Now historical With a population of 56.000 people, Greenland development itself is understood as fragmented is one of the smallest nations in the world, and and multifaceted; questioning hierarchies and it has a combined European and Inuit historical ideological constructs has become a new given. background. In all of Greenland, there are only Do museums today still have a responsibility for two art museums. They are both owned by the creating coherent historical narratives alongside municipalities, and they are both former private discrete and fragmented viewpoints? How to collections. The largest of them is located in the find a balance between innovative displays that capital, Nuuk. overtly and convincingly present their ideological premises and the seemingly neutral but tenden- Both art collections consist largely of art by the tious expositions? To create a perspective on Danish artist Emanuel A. Petersen (Petersen these issues, I present a historical case study of (1894-1948) that through beautiful scenic repre- a select group of radically experimental museum sentations depict Greenland as a vulnerable Inuit displays held at major Soviet museums between country, where people live in close contact with 1930 and 1932. Known as “paper exhibi- nature. A story that becomes a verification of the tions,” due to their abundant use of explanatory presumptions about Greenlandic art that is often materials, these displays were spurred by the found in literature on the topic. Marxist understanding of artistic development as an expression of the underlying socio-political With no other presentation of Greenlandic art, the processes. museums become carriers of a narrow perspec- tive that leaves other types of representation as Two of my examples are the special exhibition well as newer media like performance, video, entitled “Works of Art on Soviet and Revo- photography, and installation art only to be includ- lutionary Themes” held in May 1930 at The ed in temporary exhibitions. The public, including State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and an future researchers, only have access to the art experimental collection display “The Art in the historical discourse provided by the two former Era of Imperialism” held in 1931 at the State private collections and the temporary exhibitions. Russian Museum in Leningrad. Intended to The museums and their portrait of Greenlandic art educate broad masses of Soviet citizens has become an implied, unopposed truth, some- about recent developments in Russian art, thing that the lack of art criticism only contributes these displays used highly innovative narrative to. This means that the research done, in relation strategies, such as quotes by political authori- to exhibition making, takes on a very important ties, critics and artists, historical ephemera, role. The paper will discuss how to critically re- and techniques of cinematic montage, and think the narratives presented at the art museums combined several artistic media to create a in Greenland. rich and polyphonic historical presentation that appeared to have an objective basis in the dialectical-materialist methodology. Highly Mathias Danbolt effective in their curatorial strategies, some Exhibition Addresses: The Production of Publics in of which anticipate those used in museums Exhibiting Danish Colonial History today, these exhibitions were criticized for be- ing excessively didactic, for instrumentalizing 2017 marks the centenary of Denmark’s sale of individual works, and for “guiding the viewers its former Caribbean colonies to the US. This too firmly by the hand.” Examining these paper engages with questions and challenges displays in all their contradictions will shed faced in the preparation of an exhibition of visual today’s vital questions of museum curating in material from the Danish colonial archives that will a new critical light. open in 2017 at The Royal Library of Copenha-

14 gen. Exhibiting visual materials that have been sively the role of the education staff but that the central to the formation and continuance of racial- collection itself and the curators who exhibit it are ized regimes of national, gendered, and ethnic actively a part of the educational function. Since difference is challenging, as it can risk to both the beginning of its existence, the museum has spectacularize and normalize unfinished histories become a consequential device to accompany of denigration and violence. the learning process. In the beginning of the 20th century, American museums took an active part This paper seeks to discuss the politics and in the popularization of modern art and increased poetics of address when considering the framing external projects and extended programs such of the visual material in the exhibition. Following as traveling exhibitions, teaching portfolios, slide Bruce Ferguson’s seminal work on exhibition talks and projections of films. rhetorics, I am interested in reflecting on what publics can and will be produced by and through Indeed, the photographic recording seems the the exhibition. If a public, as Michael Warner has perfect instrument, as it is simultaneously a tool noted, “exists by virtue of being addressed,” of investigation, an educational material and a what work can be done to foster that the public method of communication. This paper will focus addressed will be a public of critique, diversity, on the emergence of the document exhibit in art and difference? By analyzing examples of how museums and analyse the implications of this museum exhibitions on histories of colonialism curatorial shift for the status of the document. and slavery in Denmark, the Netherlands, and the Expanding upon these ideas, this paper will con- UK address their audience in wall-texts, videos, sider also the use of documentation as educator sounds installations, games, and other para- in the museum context, underlining what can be textual framing techniques, the paper suggests called “education as a form of art”. the importance of considering the production of publics as a core curatorial concern in the process of exhibition making. Livia Dubon Artists Working with Archives: Old Story, New Par- ticipatory Narratives. The Case Study of the Ne- Lydie Delahaye gotiating Amnesia Project in the Alinari’s Archive From Archive to Museum From the post-modern till today, artists such as As a prologue to a discussion about the role of Tacita Dean, historians such as Hal Foster and film archives in the 21st century, David Francis, thinkers such as Derrida have seen archives British film archivist and curator, claims: “I believe as objects of aesthetic fascination (Charles that both library and archive are the wrong words, Merewether, 2006). So there is nothing new and museum is the right word (…) Because about inviting an artist to work in an archive, the museum itself today is a total experience: it however, the project Negotiating Amnesia by artist accepts the need to preserve the artefacts, to Alessandra Ferrini has produced a new narra- maintain heritage, but also accepts the need to tive and has used participation as a strategy to present.” (Paolo Cherchi Usai et al. (ed.), Film produce new meanings and challenge cultural Curatorship: archives, museums and the digital conventions. marketplace, 2008). Over the last decades, the new technological possibilities allow a wider Negotiating Amnesia is the first artist-in-residence representation of archives in the art museum. project realised within the Alinari’s Archive, one Archival film plays several roles in the museum of the oldest photographic archives in Europe. context: Sometimes mediation, at other times With its extensive photographic campaigns of the document or even artwork, making the construc- newly united kingdom of Italy, the Alinari Company tion of its meaning worthy of examination. Any has contributed to shaping Italian national identity. museum that is firmly didactic in purpose starts Today, Negotiating Amnesia, through the analysis with the premise that “education” is not exclu- of images of the Italian occupation of East Africa

15 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

during the fascist regime and the investigation of nonetheless redeployed as vehicles to further the history textbooks used in Italian high schools museums’ long term vision. By taking The World from 1946 to today, has brought to light hidden Goes Pop, WACK and Global Conceptualism aspects of the Italian identity, exploring the legacy as case studies this paper will address the of Italian colonialism and its emblematic politics of challenges and the outcomes that research- amnesia. driven exhibitions like these offer, and how they contribute to the reframing of contemporary The interventions of high school classes in the in- institutional practices. stallation have made Negotiating Amnesia one of the first artistic productions to be participatory and to reflect on Italian post-colonialism. This project Anne Gregersen is capable of redrawing the existing ‘conceptual The Artist as Curator: Interventions in Museum map’ and fostering the birth of a new interpreta- Collections tive community. As the production of art has become intrinsi- cally connected to its exhibition, artists have Flavia Frigeri increasingly involved themselves in the act The Challenges of Research Driven Exhibitions of curating. This does not only go for the exhibition of their own work or in the case of This paper considers the role of large-scale self-organized group exhibitions – today many group exhibitions as research platforms. Pio- museum institutions invite artists to intervene in neering research, traditionally the driving force their permanent collections and curate auteur of Academia, has incrementally been absorbed exhibitions. To some artists curating becomes in the lifecycle of institutional exhibitions. From an integrated part of their practice while others research symposiums to collaborative doctoral distinguish sharply between the two. In either awards and advisory committees, exhibitions case, it seems like artist-curators operate with have increasingly projected and enforced a de- certain privileges and have been allowed (and sire to act as research hubs. Without forgoing encouraged) by the institutions to challenge their visual drive, projects like WACK! Art and the ideological premises the collections are the Feminist Revolution (Museum of Contem- founded on or even the format of the exhibition porary Art, Los Angeles – 2007) or Global as such. Artist-curated exhibitions of the last Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s 50 years or so have thus proposed alternative (Queens Museum, New York – 1999) demon- and critical curatorial strategies – well-known strated how new research could be fostered examples are Andy Warhol’s Raid the Icebox through the curatorial lens. These endeavours I in 1969, Burton on Brancusi that initiated – with an eye to rethinking feminism the former MoMA’s Artist’s Choice’s program in 1989, and and reassessing the global remit of conceptual- Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum in 1992- ism the latter – are exemplary of how curatorial 93. These shows raised questions about the strategies fostered ground breaking research. categorization, canonization, and valorization of art and are considered seminal in exhibition Taking as a starting point The World Goes history. Pop – the exhibition I most recently co-curated at Tate Modern – this paper seeks to analyse My paper will consider the artist-curated exhibi- the role of exhibitions as a form of research. tion as a producer of alternative art historical Both the locus of art historical reassessment, discourse and discuss recent attempts to ana- projects like The World Goes Pop strategically lyze what Elena Filipovic has called “a profound- partake in the museum’s desire to expand its ly influential but still understudied phenomenon, geographical interests, as well as offer alterna- a history that has yet to be written” (“When tive views on dominant discourses. While Exhibitions Become Form. On the History of exhibitions are temporary by nature, they are the Artist as Curator”, 2014). With examples

16 from artist-curated shows at art museums (J.F. technology museum, especially in the context of Willumsens Museum, MoMA, The Metropolitan Canada’s historical articulation of science, tech- Museum) I will trace some of the character- nology, and nationalism in the construction of its istics of these exhibitions and discuss how identity as a modern nation in the 20th century. standard art historical criteria are seen replaced We will examine how this legacy survives in the by anachronic, idiosyncratic, and associative museum’s representation of the global techno- curatorial approaches. Without proposing the scientific world of the 21st century. artist-curated exhibition as a dichotomy to other kinds of exhibitions, I will consider its potential for rethinking methodological and discursive Kristian Handberg practices at museum institutions. Multiple Modernism: New Globalized Framings of the Postwar Era in the Recent Exhibitions After Year Zero and The World Goes Pop Katharine Anderson and Jan Hadlaw Re-imaging the Canada Science and Technology As museal subject, the postwar era of the 1950s Museum and 1960s is currently reassessed from being a dull, in-between age (easily overshadowed by The discovery of mould in the Canada Science the WW2-years and the notorious late1960s) and Technology Museum (Ottawa) in Septem- to a past that the present is eager to engage ber 2014 resulted in the razing of the museum with. This includes a shifting perspective from building and initiated the process of rebuilding hegemonic Western modernism to a “multiple and re-imagining one of Canada’s popular na- modernities” view emphasizing different cultural tional museums. The museum is set to reopen narratives of modernity as characterizing the era in fall 2017, the 50th anniversary of its founding. and the configuration of artistic modernism(s). The museum’s directors, curators, and interpre- tation officers, along with architects, exhibition Two recent exhibitions exemplify this: designers, and design build teams, are thus t
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;FSP at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, faced with a rare challenge and opportunity of Berlin, and Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw re-imagining the museum from the ground up. (2015): An experimental curatorial research- For us as STS scholars, the museum’s redesign based exhibition discussing the relations has afforded the opportunity to undertake an between Europe and the new nations in Africa ethnographic study of the redesign project and and Asia after 1945 (“Year Zero”), combining to observe, in practice and directly, the issues archive material form the postwar-era with and considerations that we study theoreti- contemporary artworks and research. cally—usually after the event, including ideas about scientific and technological artefacts, and t
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1PQ at Tate Modern, London the reality of articulating connections between (2015-2016). A large-scale presentation things, audiences, and words. telling “the global story of pop art from Latin America to Asia, and from Europe to the Mid- Our presentation draws on our observa- dle East” and showing “how different cultures tions of the redesign process and focuses on and countries responded to the movement” two aspects. Firstly, it considers the work of through a large survey of artworks from the interdisciplinary decision-making in creating the 1960s. meaning of artifacts. This is particularly important as science and technology museums, perhaps My presentation will discuss these cases to a greater degree than other museums, face and different types of exhibitions (experimen- the challenges of addressing and responding tal research-based with activist agenda vs. to diverse audiences and mandates. Secondly, “blockbuster” presentation and interdisciplinary we will explore the challenges and paradoxes staging of cultural historical matter vs. exhibition of crafting a national identity for a science and of artworks) as manifestations of a reassessment

17 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

of modernism and a global modernity: a central as the responsible creators of the perspectives curatorial challenge across the current museum communicated. and curatorial landscape. They do also exemplify exhibitions as forms of research correspond- ing to critical debates and academic research Henrik Holm highlighting the role of the curator as researcher, The Unchangeable Museum? A Fictitious Visit by but also the significance of different contexts Professor Donald Preziosi at the National Gallery and audiences. of Denmark / Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK)

This paper confronts the overall practice of the Nathalia Brichet and Frida Hastrup SMK with some of the challenges Donald Prezi- Mild Apocalypse. Exhibiting Interdisciplinary osi has presented to museums. According to Research Preziosi, museums have remained unchanged despite the critique produced for decades by A research-based exhibition at the new Moe- critical museology. Chrystal Palace is still the sgaard Museum in Denmark is the focus of matrix of museums, including a nice garden this presentation. The exhibition with the title accommodating the public and the offering of an “Mild Apocalypse” is based on transdisciplinary unchallenged, imperialistic-nationalistic view of fieldwork in a former industrial mining site located the world. From their temples, art is presented in the middle of Jutland, Denmark. It engages as a vehicle for escapism, not as a nexus for the so-called Søby brown coal beds as a ruined circulating difficult, fundamental questions. landscape, shaped by extractive activities in the Museums work in an epistemological vacuum years 1940-1970. A landscape that cannot by in which all activities only confirm continuity and now be fully mastered and controlled by humans containment, no matter how lofty promises they due to its instability caused by the brown coal offer. digging, resulting, among other things, in water- saturated quick sand and landslides. Regardless of Preziosi’s critique, museums like to see themselves as dedicated to change. The In the exhibition and the presentation we will thus SMK promises itself to be “a leading national gal- qualify what a Danish Anthropocene landscape lery in the 21st century”. In order to live up to this might look like. Which visual manifestations promise, the national gallery tries to include more might work for a ‘big’ and global concept like the female artists, and they have turned more event- Anthropocene when fieldworked through a rather driven, more digital, and more inclusive. small scale and in some sense insignificant former industrial landscape in Denmark? How to curate Right now, the main challenge confronting an exhibition that is based on discussions with, the SMK is not (if it ever was) how to change insights from, and stakes of other participating according to critique coming from academic researchers and not least informants living in the circles, but how to earn enough money to keep area, all of whom make up the site in multiple and up appearances after having faced yet another often contradictory ways? In the exhibition we financial cutback. Among the areas targeted for have worked with artistic creativity and aesthet- reductions were those being most experimental. ics in order both to foreground the collaborative nature of our fieldwork and to be explicit about A curator at the SMK wakes up every day thinking the curatorial choices. Along the way, a leitmotif about fundraising, fixing the budget, adopting to has been to work with the brown coal beds as a visitor surveys, and putting up yet another exhibit, site that is both more and less than the locality in all being practical matters on which museology has Søby. We thus want to explore research-based little else to offer than an unmanageable amount of exhibitions as thoroughly collaborative, genera- negative critique. Thus, the museum changes all tive and analytical feats, a stance which calls for the time, but it easily falls prey to the critique that – curators-cum-researchers taking center stage fundamentally – it does not.

18 Camilla Jalving forms of curating have evolved, implicating an Art and Affect – Participative Encounters in the increased focus on the curator as a producer Museum of cultural meanings on a par with the artist. As an effect, the curatorial has come to be seen Participation is intrinsic to most museological as an act of meaning production, sometimes in discourses today. As a highly used buzz-word, or the shape of a practice based research, as dis- a keyword to use a less loaded term by Raymond cussed in several recent publications. My paper Williams, it is often met with either enthusiasm or will discuss some of the implications of these re- skepticism by professionals and academics alike; cent discourses regarded from within a specific either posed as a possibility to grasp or a para- institutional context – that of a larger museum of digm to obey. In this paper I will briefly trace the modern art. I will bring into this discussion two different discourses on participation that permeate major projects, which I curated – the one being the field of museology and art criticism. The aim is the three-year experimental exhibition project to create the context for an alternative discourse Utopia at ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, and on participation. Taking my point of departure in the other being the recent monographic retro- recent exhibitions of contemporary art, I want to spective Yayoi Kusama – In Infinity at Louisiana insist on the aesthetic encounter and the exhibi- Museum of Modern Art. tion situation itself as a participative practice. By introducing notions of performativity, affect and Whereas recent discourses about research- immersion I want to challenge and extend the based exhibitions emphasise topical exhibitions limits of participation and the ways in which the whose curatorial approach bears resemblances concept has been framed and articulated. This to research-based artistic practices, my paper will move obviously entails the risk of diluting the investigate a different curatorial model, which has concept. Hopefully, however, it will also generate been overlooked in discourses on the curatorial – new productive ways of understanding participa- that of the single artist retrospective. This format tion by making space for bodily, perceptual and continues to hold a central and strong position in cognitive encounters between art and its public. the content programming of modern and contem- In my paper I will raise questions to the type of porary art museums. Enough reason that we, as knowledge that is produced in the ‘event-ness’ of curators, should make it the object of the same the encounter, that is, in the very act of viewing level of self-reflective scrutiny and experimentation and engaging with works of art in the museum. as we bring into more obviously “experimental” What is the character of this type of knowledge? formats. With the Yayoi Kusama exhibition as How can we – if at all – evaluate what takes a primary example my presentation reflects on place between the different agents that make up the question how a critical curatorial approach the exhibition situation? Likewise and in conclu- nested in this well-established exhibition category sion, some thoughts will be shared regarding my can productively generate new cultural narra- extension of the concept of participation. What tives. A main argument in my presentation is that is gained by extending this notion – and what is contemporary and modern art museums should lost in the process? And how does this extended regard themselves as generators. In contrast to a version align with existing discourses on participa- traditional notion of the museum as an institution, tion? which preserves existing meanings, guarding what is already there, I take a constructivist approach Marie Laurberg highlighting how curatorial work creates cultural The Museum as Generator, or: What Can The narratives and play a part in shaping the cultural Single Artist Retrospective Learn from the Topical imaginary. Thus the museum takes the shape as Exhibition? a “producer of culture”. I will touch upon issues such as: how to narrate the artist, what constitutes The last decade has witnessed an increased the oeuvre, integrating research into the curatorial theoretical and educational focus on the ex- process, and methods and potentials of curating panded field of the curatorial. New experimental beyond the white cube.

19 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

Barbara Mahlknecht has emerged under the heading of “Fashion Curating the Archive. Feminist Politics, Curatorial Curation” (at London College of Fashion since Strategies 2006). This Master’s programme has existed for ten years under the leadership of Professor In the context of the archival turn, archives Judith Clark, who in her own curatorial work is became of primary interest to curators, artists, considered to have transformed the language of and cultural researchers. Until today, both exist- fashion exhibitions from dress history displays ing archives and archives to be constructed to conceptual fashion experiences. Drawing remain a major curatorial challenge in the field on the historical legacy of Diana Vreeland, who of art and research. Queer/Feminist theorists was special consultant to The Costume Institute such as Anne Cvetkovich (2003), Kate Eichhorn at The Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as (2013), and Suely Rolnik (2012) have empha- Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue, Clark trans- sized the central role and notion of archives for lates the editorial language into a curatorial one feminist thinking. Building on the conception that in order to draw attention to the narrative of the archives enable to change the perspective on exhibition and to evoke emotional experiences the conditions of the present, this paper looks in its visitors. at the potential of archival practices specifically for feminist curating. Rather than considering the In the paper, the disciplinary content of “fashion archive as a site of historical truth and represen- curation” will be explored, museologically con- tation, feminist curators and artists alike make textualised, and discussed in connection with an use of the archive as a format that enables analysis of the recent special exhibition Utopian new forms of research as well as micropolitical Bodies: Fashion Looks Forward, shown at Lilje- feminist intervention. valchs Art Gallery in Stockholm (September 25, 2015 – February 7, 2016). The exhibition was Thus, this paper explores how feminist art- curated by fashion curation graduates Serge ists and curators have developed curatorial Martynov and Sofia Hedman, who form the cura- strategies that challenge dominant narratives of tion and exhibition design company Museea, space, temporality, the subject, and histories. and critics praised their work in Utopian Bodies These practices un/do the archive as a format as representing the state of the art in fashion that mobilizes alternative feminist politics. The curatorship. paper will address the following questions: How can curatorial procedures and practices unfold the potential of the archive as a site of research Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer but also of critical investigation? And how Images as Visual Sources: Representing the does a feminist curatorial practice look like that Former Danish West Indies considers the archive as part of a “genealogi- cal politics” (Kate Eichhorn 2013) that aims at Historical images from the former Danish West regaining agency and that developes modes of Indies have shaped and continue to inform inter- micropolitical intervention within the field of art pretations of the Danish colonial past. Museum, and curating? archival and library collections include several depictions of the area and its inhabitants, from Frederik von Scholten's drawings and watercol- Marie Riegels Melchior ours from the 1830s to stereographs sold by Fashion Curation. Unpacking a New Discipline Elfelt & Co.'s photographic atelier around 1900. and Practice The vast majority of these images are created by Danes and as such represent the colonizer's At a time when fashion is increasingly enter- perspective. In historiographical publications, ing galleries and museums, and even shops exhibitions, and popular culture at large these and boutiques are being transformed into images often occur as mere illustrations of places “curated” spaces, a new academic discipline and people, as neutral windows to the world of

20 the colonial past. They are rarely considered as The indigenous knowledge bank of community representations with a viewpoint and a history of (local knowledge) and environmental changes their own. (traditional knowledge) have accumulated over several generations and the museum wishes Exhibiting these images in an exhibition on rep- to extract and visualise these changes through resentations of the Caribbean with a focus on public participation. the former Danish West Indies, how does one elucidate the image as a representation and The twist is that Nuuk Museum focuses on intan- direct the spectator's attention to its context gible heritage and my research examines how the of creation and interpretation? How does one intangible is made tangible and if this transfigura- reproduce or present the image without repro- tion resonates with the local community. The aim, ducing the understanding of it as transparent? however, is also to create a venue accommodat- ing the local community as well as the seasonal The paper gives an insight into the preparation visitors. This venue will ideally negotiate and link of an exhibition at The Royal Library of Copen- the international community with the local and fur- hagen in 2017 commemorating the centenary thermore offer space for collective dissemination. of the sale of the Danish West Indies. Following Both the museum and the users would benefit the works of scholars such as Nicholas Mirzoeff, from such an arrangement since all stakeholders Krista A. Thompson, and Marcus Wood it inves- would gain new knowledge and appreciation for tigates a number of different images in order to Inuit cultural heritage. point to certain visual tropes and genres in what could be identified as a visual discourse on the Danish West Indies. Sidsel Nelund Congress, Forum, Hearing, Summit – on the Political Complexion of Exhibition Events Kirstine Møller Nuuk Museum: A Case Study on Public Participa- Since the mid-2000s, and especially in the tion in Exhibition Making and Heritage Manage- past couple of years, the European part of the ment art world has seen an increasing amount of large art events taking on names and formats of The cultural landscapes of Grenland are per- political proceedings. Think of the The Anthro- ceived differently depending on perspective; the pocene Project at Haus der Kulturen der Welt scientific researcher experiences the landscape 2013-14 that consisted of a series of hearings as a climatic library of knowledge preserved by and forums aimed at ‘providing new models for permafrost and huge distances, the tourists come culture, politics, and everyday life’. Or think of for the magnificent landscape, quaint towns and the New World Summit initiated by artist Jonas a sample of the local Inuit culture whereas the Staal in 2012 that describes itself as ‘an artistic indigenous Inuit experiences hunting grounds and and political organization dedicated to providing places related to old stories and past experi- “alternative parliaments” to host organizations ences. that currently find themselves excluded from democracy.’ The first two are seasonal visitors briefly interact- ing with the cultural landscapes, the physical Such an emphasis on political organisation points landscapes, museums, and special tours. The to a tendency to use the exhibition space for latter are permanently in Greenland with almost convoking people beyond the art scene (experts, completely different experiences. The local claim scientist, activists and laymen) around pressing is- has been that museums are for tourists but sues. In this paper, I present initial research into the through participatory approaches, community political complexion of such art events. First, what participation, involvement, and engagement Nuuk characterizes these exhibition events? Next, what Museum is contesting that claim. possible tradition can they be seen in the light of?

21 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

And how can we critically theorise such initiatives? is how the projected still image of works of art I suggest to base these questions on a historical should be contextualized in terms of its media backdrop of political and cultural art events, such history, as well as its apparatus and hybrid as the tri-continental meetings and Mediterranean character. Instead of so-called “historical“, “true“ biennials from the 1950s, pan-Arabic biennials in reconstructions, this exhibition project focused the 1970s, the Havana Biennial from the 1980s on activating the memory of contemporary spec- and Documenta since 1997. The theoretical dis- tators not only through presenting these archival cussion uses sociological theory and philosophy documents but also by producing and represent- pertaining to the Francophile tradition from the ing new forms of mediation from historical facts. 1990s and onwards of Bruno Latour (‘parlia- The paper therefore discusses the conceptually ment of things’), Michel Callon (‘hybrid forums’) contradictive nature of curatorial subjectivity while and Isabelle Stengers (‘cosmopolitical proposal’ creating memories through an exhibition, and and ‘slowing down’) to ask the critical ques- the nature of documents to which objectivity is tion: can the exhibition space of today fulfil the traditionally ascribed. Furthermore, it is striking to expectations of hosting alternative processes of see that the artist's voice has not been integrated democracy? in any official discussion, neither in catalogue nor press contexts. The evaluation of the project by the artist himself has been taken into close con- Susanne Neubauer sideration and been juxtaposed with the concept Against the Grain of Neutralization: Exhibiting the of the diverse uses of projected documentary Ephemeral as a Curatorial Production of Historical images within the exhibition display. Knowledge

If the curatorial requires new approaches to Sabine Dahl Nielsen knowledge mediation, then many argue this Multi-sited Curating as a Critical Mode of should go hand in hand with new forms of Knowledge Production reactualizing the artistic potency and inventing curatorial commemoration. In 2011, Italian curator In my paper, I will present and discuss the notion Francesca Bertolotti organized a retrospective of multi-sited curating. When taking a look at to- of Reiner Ruthenbeck’s work, presented at the day’s international art scene it becomes apparent Villa Romana in Florence. Ruthenbeck (*1937), a that many art institutions are currently venturing former student of Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf, is into public spaces and engaging in so-called one of the most recognized German sculptors of off-site curating. In my paper, I will argue that a his generation. His work spans from conceptual shift can advantageously be made from off-site to minimal sculpture, installation, sound, photog- curating to multi-sited curating. By using the term raphy and drawing. He uses everyday materials multi-sited curating I mean to imply that sites such as cloth, ashes or paper and is interested should not only be perceived as singular, i.e. as in contrasting materiality and lightness to produce specific and clearly delineated physical spaces. contemplative or surreal works. The visually haptic They should also be thought of as multiple in the materiality is a distinct quality of his work. The sense that they are interrelated, intertwined and exhibition “Dokumentation Reiner Ruthenbeck” situated within a plurality of mutually dependant presented his works by projecting them onto the flows and networks. gallery walls. Drawing on critical mobility studies, human ge- In my paper I want to discuss key aspects of this ography, conflict theory and globalisation theory, exhibition project. I will mainly elaborate on the my paper will explore how theoretical fields of hypothetical question whether such an exhibi- research such as these can become relevant in tion is a curatorial gimmick or a feasible way of relation to curatorial projects. These considera- art mediation through documentation. If the latter tions will take their analytical point of departure in applies, the next question that will be discussed a concrete curatorial research project that I am

22 currently working on, namely Transit: Mobility and MR have provided a number of interactive pos- Migration in the age of Globalisation. The project sibilities for connecting users with archives and in question seeks to explore the notion of multi- cultural information in multiple environments. GPS sited curating as a critical mode of knowledge locative functions, geo-spatial panoramas, image production. Among other activities, a series of or object recognition, and the incorporation of urban transit zones will be employed as com- multimedia (video, sound), are all browser-based missioning sites. In my paper, I will discuss how capabilities that (despite their limitations) enable this curatorial strategy intends to emphasize – in users to access that which is not immediately a very concrete and tangible way - how transit visible to the eye. zones in today’s globalised societies are con- nected in a multiplicity of ways. Also, the strategy Our approach to curating is one of participatory seeks to highlight the fact that mobility flows are remediation: where people, archives, objects often characterized by varying intensities, asym- and words combine with digital matter and metrical power relations and unequal means of contribute to a performance or re-enactment participation. To sum up, I will thus argue that of memory. An experience where tags, loops, urgent questions such as who is moving, why feeds, delays, and glitches further enhance the and under which specific conditions become fragmented and “out of synch” connections possible to address when activating the notion of between present and past. The approach we are multi-sited curating in the medium of the research developing is therefore one of subtle disrup- exhibition. tion – activating memories rather than re-telling history, and using technology to create openings that point to moments of intimacy and sensitivity. Susan Kozel, Maria Engberg, In this way, we bring people into closer contact and Temi Odumosu with hidden presences, unexpected turns in Living Archives. Artistic Research Approaches to narrative, or simply face to face with the fragile Mixed-Reality Curating seams of archiving itself.

Living Archives is a research project based at Malmö University in Sweden, which explores Margareta von Oswald the potential of networked and digitized cultural “Object Biographies“ – Addressing the Challenges heritage archives by prototyping and testing Facing Ethnographic Collections in Europe possibilities for the co-production of shared public memories. Viewing archive material (pho- Ethnographic museums have had to deal with tographs, film/video, audio, text) as relevant and a vigorous critique, one which questions the interactive social resources in the present we legitimacy of their very existence. They have are extending traditional archiving and curato- continuously tried to reposition themselves amidst rial practices by considering alternative modes heated debates concerning the museums’ colo- of narrative interaction that include Augmented nial origins, touching on controversial issues such Reality (AR), the sensorial, and the performative. as, first, the objects’ material appropriation in colonial contexts; second, the objects’ symbolic This presentation will describe a methodological appropriation through their naming, categoriz- shift from Augmented Reality (AR) to Mixed Reality ing, and exhibiting, and third, past and present (MR) by focussing on two experimental projects access to their collections, generally excluding currently in progress, where we have integrated those who have cultural links to them. AR software on iOS handheld devices with perfor- mance and other curatorial strategies: “Affexity: The exhibition “Object Biographies“, which I co- Passages and Tunnels” exploring layers of chore- curated with Dr Verena Rodatus, attempted to ography in various urban settings; and “Bitter and address some of those challenges on a curatorial Sweet” revealing colonial memories embedded level. On display in Berlin’s Ethnologisches Mu- in the Vestindisk Pakhus in Copenhagen. AR/ seum from March to October 2015, the exhibition

23 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

rotated the gaze, directing it at the museum Since 2008 the Museum of Copenhagen has itself – at its history, practices, and networks. It attempted to rethink itself along the lines of a examined three objects from the Africa collec- networked conversation. Changing its profile from tion as case studies. In cooperation with African a more traditional, static museum with permanent and European scholars, we highlighted different chronological galleries to a more contemporary aspects of the objects’ trajectories to address institution, it has developed its visitor profile through controversial issues linked to European ethno- a comprehensive programme of outreach projects, graphic collections. exhibitions on contemporary topics, and experi- ments with online and urban space dissemination. We laid open the history of two very prominent The museum is currently entering a new phase objects from today’s Cameroon and Democratic of its transformation moving from Vesterbro to a Republic of the Congo. We not only showed location in Central Copenhagen where a new mu- their violent provenance during colonial times, seum will open in Spring 2018. In my paper, I will but also questioned the subsequent construction discuss the visions for the new museum as well by the market and by the museum of a canon of as the curatorial challenges involved in redirecting “African Art“. The third object group, from today’s focus and integrating explorations from the recent Benin, had never been exhibited before. Together institutional change. The layout and exhibitions with a Beninese art historian, we took the object of the new museum will merge the concept of group as a starting point for a collaborative networked conversation with new tendencies research project to pursue the question of what in the museum sector centering on sustainable the absence of the objects meant in their region exhibition practices. This entails designing exhibi- of origin. The exhibition thus went beyond a tions and museums that allows for the ephemeral mere ”historicized reflexivity“ (Sharon Macdon- and transformational outside the format of the ald). It contributed to the reflection about the use large-scale temporary exhibition. And it means of these historical collections today and how reconfiguring the museum in its spatial and tem- these collections, after we break with colonial poral dimensions, seeing the museum not only as epistemologies and modes of thought, can be a building, but as a materialized and historicized used in contemporary research, discussion and form of dialogue integrated into the urban fabric. identification.

Johan Kjærulff Rasmussen Jakob Ingemann Parby Mobilizing Participation at Museum of Rethinking the Urban History Museum – Copenhagen Challenges and Possibilities in Curating the New Museum of Copenhagen During recent years Museum of Copenhagen has tested many different approaches to participa- In 2006 Duncan Grewcock wrote that if museums tory practice. Ranging from the engagement of cities did not already exist, they would need of school children in building exhibitions and to be invented to help understand and negotiate managing community gardens (the exhibitions urban change. He argued that city museums had Kids Life and Urban Nature) to having citizens of the potential to occupy a unique position as “an different professions comment on usage of vari- open-ended [...] democratic space, that can be ous artefacts (the exhibition The past beneath our physically experienced as a quarter of the city, but feet). However, due to relocation of the museum also used as a site for debate, discussion and (scheduled to open spring 2018) the museum is experimentation on urban issues within the context currently closed and therefore struggling with the of a city’s past, present and future.” This could issue of finding participatory ground. How and invoke the museum “as a networked, distributed why should Museum of Copenhagen engage conversation rather than an inward-looking institu- and involve citizens when the museum is closed? tion.” (Duncan Grewcock, ”Museums of Cities and In this proposal I will approach this challenge Urban Futures”, 2006) from two different perspectives to exemplify the

24 current participatory approach at Museum of with all”. Inspired by urban protest movements Copenhagen. the theoretical conception of a “Right to the Museum” (Bettel, Reitstätter 2015) investigates The first perspective is participation as a field of the overall museum’s claim of being an open, several parallel conflicts. At Museum of Copen- public institution and its implementation in eve- hagen participation is a conflict between being ryday practice. How do museum professionals something the institution creates for versus with see their role in this social turn and deal with it citizens; a conflict related to the struggle of differ- in their curatorial practice? Methodologically, the ent participatory rungs of participation (ARnstein, study draws on a hermeneutic analysis of expert S.; Ladder of citizen participation, 1969). But interviews, focus groups and statements of participation also initiates a conflict between curators explaining their positions and perspec- participation as a matter of choice and desire, or tives on populism. something obligatory and created out of neces- sity. Finally, it is a conflict between recipients Curatorial conflict lines address the problem – should the institution engage a new audience of accessibility versus additional funding, the or try to maintain their core visitors? These discrepancy of different visitor needs as well as conflicts all circle around the matter of establish- the imbalance of necessary efforts and limited ing a strong why of participation; a question that resources in the institutional demand to estab- shapes how (civic) leaders inspire action (Sinek, lish and foster relationships with its audience. As S.; Start with why, 2009) and through that en- one interviewee stated, “in the end the question gage citizens in participatory projects. is to whom you feel responsible”. Unfortunately, the desire to be a democratic institution is in the Secondly, I see (long-term) participation as a end often thwarted by the obligation towards the matter of leadership. Without an ability to inspire board of trustees, respectively the local politics engagement and action in any given cause, the that provide the financial basis. Or, as is the prerequisite for long-term participation is reduced. case in the contemporary art scene, serving the This approach is inspired by tools of community inside crowd dominates holding up museum organizing and provides tools for motivating citi- standards that refer to peers. This situation zens, establishing strong communities, and creat- includes a number of curatorial challenges. ing change within organizations such as Museum Because: It’s a tricky job to appeal to your of Copenhagen. I am currently working on creating sponsors, your colleagues and your neighbours a History Makerspace within the new location of at the same time. The talk aims at pointing out Museum of Copenhagen. I will use this project as answers within institutional approaches and a case-in-development in my presentation. individual curatorial strategies.

Luise Reitstätter Merete Sanderhoff It’s a Tricky Job. The Profession of Curating and Mix It Up! Old Collections Inspiring New Creativity the Problem of Populism and Learning

Museums have come out of their shell – using Statens Museum for Kunst (SMK) is on a mis- social media, blogs, museum apps, crowd- sion to explore how digital media can increase funding, online collections, participatory art our reach and impact as public institution. To projects, community events, free entrance on this end, we have opened up our public domain specific days, wireless internet on site etc. In digitised collections to be freely re-used for all fact, the last years have seen a rise of populism purposes, be they creative, commercial, innova- against the background of democratisation tive, erudite or playful. desires entangled with neoliberal politics. While in the 1970s the battle cry was “a culture for In the spring of 2015, SMK invited a range of de- all”, today’s institutions ideally envision “a culture signers and artists to remix digitised, old master-

25 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

pieces that are out of copyright due to age. There tion installation became inevitable as a response were no rules or limitations as to what could be to the current Lumad situation. In addition, done or imagined. We wanted both our visi- participatory activities were conducted such as tors and ourselves to be surprised and get new group consultations with the displaced Lumad perspectives on our collections. The remixes that representatives, preliminary exhibit walk-through came out of the design challenge were exhibited with the Lumad, and Lumad participation during next to the original artworks over the course of a the exhibition opening. Curating the Lumad weekend, as a hack on the museum’s collec- exhibition then became a series of negotiations, tions, spaces and traditional ways of working. consultations, and coordination between the members of the curatorial team, the museum In my talk, I will argue why it’s part of our strategy management, the Lumad representatives, and as a public museum to be a catalyst for users’ other stakeholders. The outcome is an exhibition creativity, and how this hinges on our obligation to validated and highly appreciated by the Lumad foster learning and engagement in the arts. I will representatives who, through participatory tell you how the project was received – both by processes guided by anthropological concerns, the artists, the visitors, and internally in the organi- became curatorial partners in curating the exhibi- sation. Finally, I will address how the concept of tion to accommodate the realities and complexi- Bildung can be reinterpreted as an act of Building ties of their contemporary circumstances. The with digitised cultural heritage. paper for this presentation will document how the National Museum curatorial team negotiated Info about Mix it up! www.smk.dk/en/visit-the- with different stakeholders and circumstances, museum/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/exhibition- and how they addressed curatorial challenges mix-it-up to attempt a more balanced view of the Lumad. The presentation will also show how participa- tory strategies, establishing partnerships, proper Cyril A. Santos coordination and incorporating anthropological The Lumad Mindanao Exhibition in the National methods provide means to give more meaningful Museum of the Philippines: Encountered Chal- and more inclusive outcomes for ethnographic lenges and Negotiations in Curating Ethnographic exhibitions. Finally, the presentation will conclude Collections by giving recommendations for future ethno- graphic exhibitions dealing with similar curatorial The ‘Lumad Mindanao Exhibition’ in the National challenges. Museum of the Philippines mainly features material culture of the 13 major Lumad groups represented in the National Ethnographic Collec- Katarina Stenbeck tion. It highlights the significance of Mindanao’s Exhibition as Tool (southern Philippines) natural environment and resources to Lumad identity, experiences, en- Current ideas of the curatorial, understood as counters and linkages with other groups and for- an interdisciplinary multifaceted process of eigners. Lumad, a Visayan word meaning “born public presentations aimed at exploring a set from the earth”, refers to the 19 indigenous, of questions, emphasise its affinity to research. non-Moro or non-Muslim groups in Mindanao. Traditionally, exhibition making involves a process of research that precedes the exhibition, with The exhibition was being curated at a time when the exhibition being the result of this research. In issues concerning the Lumad were being main- contrast, the curatorial considers the exhibition as streamed in popular media. These include is- the space where research takes place, that is, a sues on group identity, ancestral domain claims, practice that involves the exhibition as an act of displacement due to privatization of land and research. How are we to understand the exhibi- increasing human rights violations. Reconfigura- tion as a way of conducting research and the kind tions of the curatorial plan throughout the exhibi- of knowledge it generates? In a situation char-

26 acterised by a global eco-crisis, mass migration form and eventual character of the exhibition, but and the dismantling of the welfare state how can something that employs the thinking involved in the exhibition function as a place for countering exhibition-making and researching" (2015). Rather dominant narratives through critical explorations of than trying to define the curatorial, this paper sets urgent issues of our time? Looking at a number of out to perform the curatorial by examining how a recent exhibition projects this paper will discuss basic curatorial act can be considered a mode what it means to consider the exhibition as of inquiry. The focus is, in other words, not the research and how it might bring about other ways exhibition as a form of research, but the thinking of knowing the world and countering the current and doing that comes before the exhibition. state of affairs. The paper turns on a curatorial project that I conducted in relation to the Danish Radio Archive Hanne Hammer Stien by commissioning two artists, Kajsa Dahlberg and Overcoming the Divide between Art and Culture Olof Olsson, to engage with the archive and pro- History: A Turn towards Photographs and Art duce artworks in relation to it. Commissioning can within Cultural History Museums be designated as an act of delegating a particular task to someone else – here that of engaging with Susan A. Crane has argued that photographs the DR Archive – but as this paper will propose it function as a background in cultural history mu- also constitutes a curatorial mode of inquiry into seums. In my research, I claim that the represen- the archive. Fleshing out this two-pronged ap- tational crisis and the critique of the linguistic turn proach, the paper will unfold as a line of reason- among other things have brought photographs to ing that explicates the why, the how and the what the foreground of the museum institution, blurring of the commission. That is to say, the incentive to the divide between cultural history photography commission, the workings of the commission and and art photography. This change, I argue, is part the kind of thinking the commission engenders. of a bigger turn in cultural history museums where photographs and art are gaining more weight. In my paper, I will address the historical divide be- Karin Tybjerg tween art and cultural history, and discuss if the Curatorial Strategies for Exhibiting Epistemological changes within the museum institution are chal- Objects lenging this divide or reinforcing it. In the discus- sion, I will use concepts as artistic interventions, The exhibition is, as stated in the write-up for the knowledge paradigm, and artistic research the conference, a site of cultural exchange. A drawing on different theoretical approaches and less fashionable description more current in the different academic disciplines. hey-day of museums in the 19th century is that it is a place to do research and gain knowledge – often scientific. The two are however, particularly Trine Friis Sørensen with modern views of how scientific knowledge is Commissioning as a Mode of Inquiry produced, not mutually exclusive.

In recent years, a number of commentators have The museum may thus be viewed as a knowl- offered different understandings of the notion of edge-generating object. And in the special case the curatorial, spanning from a constellational of Museums of Science, Technology and Medi- activity linking objects, people and spaces (von cine the objects in the exhibition are also made Bismarck) to a thinking through the activity or collected with the explicit aim of generating of curating (Martinon, Rogoff et al.). Although knowledge – they are epistemological objects. disparate, what binds these views together is Following ideas of Hans-Jürg Rheinberger and that they all pertain to forms of research (O'Neill & Karin Knorr-Cetina and their concepts of episte- Wilson, Sheikh). Sheikh elaborates, "the curatorial mological things and epistemological objects, I is not necessarily something that takes on the will consider ways of curating scientific objects

27 ABSTRACTS SPEAKERS

that allow the epistemological functions of the exhibition and the exhibited objects to reinforce each other. I will draw on the example of the exhibition The Body Collected at Medical Museion in Copenhagen, which showed how doctors and medical researchers have collected human bodily material to generate medical knowledge.

The paper furthermore suggests that the approach of epistemic history – of viewing knowledge-making as historically and culturally embedded – may serve to heal the rift between exhibitions that deal with the cultural history of science and science centres that display sci- entific knowledge in a timeless and supposedly culture-independent fashion.

Lotten Gustafsson Reinius and Robert Willim Possible Worlds and the Surrealities of Ethnography

In 2014, The Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm invited Robert Willim, a collaboration resulting in the audiovisual performance Possible Worlds as well as an on-going dialogue on mu- seum imaginaries and representation.

Possible Worlds was an attempt to explore notions of ethnographic surrealism and the interplay between the evocation of worlds and situated performance. The notion draws partly on James Clifford’s (1981) statement about ethnographic surrealism as a utopian construct of past and future possibilities. Early ethno- graphic expedition material was enmeshed with recordings from other trips. Mundane everyday things collide with devotional objects, undefined landscapes and actions as well as the non-place sounds from electronic circuits. The material was mixed through live improvisation and followed by a public debate on temporalities, place and per- formativity. At present was a panel of experts on popular imaginations and creations of possible worlds. While “the ethnographic” was revealed as a particular and poetic mode, museum objects were liberated from frames of objectivity and distance.

28 BIOGRAPHIES KEYNOTES

Peter Bjerregaard (PhD) is senior adviser of exhibitions at Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo. His research is mainly concerned with a theoretical re-thinking of the museum institution and with the potential of exhibitions as research. Bjerregaard is co-editor of Materialities of Passs- ing (Ashgate 2016) and editor of Exhibitions as Research (Routledge, forthcoming).

Wera Grahn (PhD) is Associate Professor in Gender Studies, Senior Lecturer and Head of the Unit for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies at Linköping University. Grahn has vast experience in research- ing, teaching and publishing in the field of cultural heritage with a focus on gender perspectives. Her academic background is Ethnology and History of ideas, and she earned her PhD in Gender Studies with the dissertation “Know Thyself”: Gender, Historical constructions and representations in a Museum of Cultural History (2006).

Tone Hansen is Director of Henie Onstad Kunstsenter (HOK), Oslo. She is Head of Council for Arts Council Norway for the period 2016-2020. Recently, she co-curated In Search of Matisse, an innovative exhibition based on provenance research investigating the looting of cultural heritage and artworks. Former curator at HOK and scholar at the Academy of Fine Art, Oslo with the project Megamonstermuseum. Editor of the readers Phantom of Liberty: Contemporary Art and the Peda- gogical Paradox (2014), We Are Living on A Star (2014), and (Re)Staging the Art Museum (2011).

Donald Preziosi (PhD, Harvard) is Emeritus Professor of Art History & Critical Theory, UCLA, and Distinguished Research Professor. He is the author, editor and co-editor of 14 books on art and architectural history, theory, and criticism, and the interdependence of philosophy, theology, politics, and museology. He has held visiting professorships in the US, Europe, Istanbul, and Australia. His most recent book is Art, Religion, Amnesia: The Enchantments of Credulity (London: Routledge, 2014).

Simon Sheikh (PhD) is a curator and theorist. He is Reader in Art and Programme Director of MFA Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is a correspondent for Springerin, Vienna, and a columnist for e-flux Journal, New York. He is currently a researcher for the on-going Former West project, initiated by BAK in Utrecht, and working on a book about art and apocalypse entitled It’s After the End of the World.

29 BIOGRAPHIES SPEAKERS AND MODERATORS

Katharine Anderson is a historian of science in curating and residencies. She has worked with the Department of Humanities at York University. She artist-led initiatives, galleries, museums and academic is interested in both classic and new approaches institutions internationally since 2000. Currently she is to the study of scientific instruments. Publications an AHRC-funded doctoral researcher at Amgueddfa include: (Anderson et al.) “Reading Instruments: Cymru - National Museum Wales for Aberystwyth Objects, Texts and Museums” Science and Educa- University. [email protected] tion (2013); “Coral Jewellery/ Victorian Things: A Forum on Material Objects” (2008). She is currently Mette Boritz, Senior Curator and PhD at the working on a book on oceans as places of observa- National Museum of Denmark. Her research and daily tion in the 1920s. [email protected] work is related to museum education and exhibitions. She is particularly interested in studying how enga- Ahu Antmen, PhD, Associate Professor, is a lecturer ging multiple senses can be used in combination with of modern and contemporary art at Marmara University museum materiality. [email protected] Faculty of Fine Arts in Istanbul, Turkey. Her recent pub- lications include a compilation of her essays, Bodies Nathalia Brichet, PhD, is Postdoc at Anthropology, with Identities – Art, Identity, Gender and Bare, Naked, University of Aarhus. Her research is focused on ex- Nude – A Story of Modernity in Turkish Painting. tractive industries in Greenland and Denmark where she uses fieldwork to collect and exhibit anthropo- Mattias Bäckström, PhD in History of Science logical analyses. She has co-curated exhibitions at and Ideas, Postdoc Fellow at the Centre for Museum the National Museum of Denmark, National Museum Studies, University of Oslo and has worked as Exhibi- of Ghana and Moesgaard Museum in Denmark. tion Curator. Publications include: “Making things mat- With Hastrup she has published “Sensationelle ter: Meaning and materiality in museum displays”, in trivialiteter – Museer i vores eksotiske verden” and Nordic Museology, 2015; “Loading guns with patriotic “Terrestrials in Ruined Landscapes: Potentials in an love: Artur Hazelius’s attempts to remake Swedish so- Anthropocene Era”. [email protected] ciety” in National museums: New Studies from around the World, 2011. [email protected] Franziska Brüggmann, MA, is a curator and exhibition manager for fine art exhibitions. She is Michael Barrett is PhD in Cultural Anthropology. He experienced as art educator and exhibition coordina- is curator for Africa collections, National Museums of tor. She studied philosophy, art theory, curating and World Culture, Sweden, and his research is on history museum education in Hildesheim, Barcelona, and of collections; representation of Africa/Africans in Zurich. Since 2014, she is PhD candidate at Zeppelin museums and popular media. He has published on University: Her research focuses on the influence migration and social history. Curatorial work include of institutional critique on the current institutional The Other Camera; Vodou; and The Storage, a landscape, exhibition formats and notion of critical permanent gallery at the Museum of Ethnography, curating in the 21st century Stockholm. [email protected] Irene Campolmi is PhD candidate at Aarhus Uni- Adam Bencard is currently researcher and curator versity and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art with the in the Section for Science Communication at the The project “The Art Museum of the 21st Century. Ethics, Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research, and Sustainability in Modern and Contem- Research and at the Medical Museion in Copenha- porary Art Institutions”. She co-organized Between gen. He is curating the exhibition Mind the Gut, winner the Discursive and the Immersive: A Symposium on of the Bikubenfonden Vision 2015 award. Recent Research in the 21st Century Art Museums, 2015. publications include “Presence in the museum – On Publications include: “Contemporary Aesth-Ethics. metonymies, discontinuity and history without stories”, The Ethical Turn in 21st Century Art Museums” Museums and Society, 2014. [email protected] (2016), ICOM the Museum Journal. [email protected]

Judit Bodor (UK) is an independent curator. Her Masha Chlenova is an art historian and curator areas of interest are artists’ archives, event-based specializing in modern art with a focus on the Rus-

30 BIOGRAPHIES SPEAKERS AND MODERATORS

sian avant-garde. She holds a PhD from Columbia Livia Dubon is a Florence based art-writer and inde- University and has worked at the Metropolitan Mu- pendent curator. Her curatorial practice investigates seum, the Guggenheim and most recently The Mu- themes related to memory and identity. Livia has seum of Modern Art, where she co-organized, with three Masters Degrees, Museums and Gallery Stud- Leah Dickerman, Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925. ies (University of Newcastle-UK, 2009), International She has published in October and in exhibition Art Management (University of Genoa-Italy, 2006) and catalogs published by MoMA, Guggenheim, Tate Art History (University of Parma-Italy, 2004). She has Modern and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. published in Artkernel, Artribune, Kriticaonline, and [email protected] Mnemoscape. [email protected]

Hans Dam Christensen is professor at University Maria Engberg is an Assistant Professor at Malmö of Copenhagen and director of the Danish Centre University, Department of Media Technology and for Museum Research. His research areas comprise Product Development, and an Affiliate Researcher museology, visual culture and cultural communication. at the Augmented Environments Lab at Georgia Recent publications include ““Plus de figures!”: On Institute of Technology (US). Her research interests Saussure’s use of images” (Journal of Visual Com- include digital aesthetics, locative media and media munication, forthcoming), “A never-ending story: The studies. Recent publications include: (as co-editor) gendered art museum revisited” (Museum Manage- Ubiquitous Computing, Complexity, and Culture ment and Curatorship, 2015). [email protected] 2015. [email protected]

Nivi Christensen, MA in Art History from the Uni- Flavia Frigeri is a curator at Tate Modern, where versity of Copenhagen, with a focus on Greenlandic she works on exhibitions and acquisitions. She is Art and Art Museums. She has published a number the co-curator (with Jessica Morgan) of The World of articles on Greenlandic Art, and is a member of the Goes Pop (September 2015 - January 2016). She Greenlandic museum organization. Since 2015 she is served as an Assistant Curator on Henri Matisse: the head of Nuuk Art Museum. [email protected] The Cut-Outs (2014) and The EY Exhibition Paul Klee: Making Visible (2013). She is a PhD candidate Mathias Danbolt is Assistant Professor in Art at University College London’s History of Art depart- History at the University of Copenhagen. He is spe- ment. fl[email protected] cialized in contemporary art and performance with a focus on queer, feminist, and antiracist perspectives Anne Gregersen is postdoc at the Depart- on art and culture. He is currently researching the ment of Art and Cultural Studies at the University effects and affects of Danish colonialism in the field of Copenhagen with affiliation to J.F. Willumsens of art and visual culture. Recent publications include Museum. Her current research project investigates articles in Otherwise: Imagining Queer Feminist Art the phenomenon of artists working as curators Histories (2016), Not Now! Now! Chronopolitics, Art within an institutional setting. Recent articles: “Det and Research (2014), and re.act.feminism #2: a konceptuelle badebillede”, I Bølgen Blå, (2016), “Om performing archive (2014). [email protected] kunstner-kunstsamlinger, et uhierarkisk kulturarkiv og fastholdelsen af fortiden”, Shibboleth, Esbjerg Kunst- Lydie Delahaye is Adjunct in Film Studies and PhD museum (TBP 2016). [email protected] candidate in Aesthetics at University Paris VIII – Vin- cennes. Her doctoral research focuses on the shift Jan Hadlaw is a historian of technology and design of the cultural status of documentation from archive in the Department of Design at York University. Her to the current curatorial practices in art museums. research focuses on the history of modern tech- She graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts nological artifacts and the imaginaries that have de Paris and holds a MA in Aesthetics from the shaped their design and meaning. Recent publica- Université La Sorbonne. Recent texts have been tions include “The Modern American Telephone as a published in the Exhibition Catalogue of the Pinault Contested Technological Thing, 1920-39” (forthcom- Collection (Venice) and in Histoire de l’Art, the Ecole ing). Her current research examines the role played du Louvre’s journal. [email protected] by design and technology in the performance of

31 BIOGRAPHIES SPEAKERS AND MODERATORS

Canadian national identity during the 1960s and 70s. seum of modernist art in Europe and USA. Kjærboe [email protected] has published on sculpture, Danish modernist art and museum history. He is Vice President of the Danish Kristian Handberg, PhD, Postdoc with the project Association of Art Historians and editor of Kunsthistor- Multiple Modernities: World Images and Dreamworlds isk Bogliste. [email protected] in arts and culture, 1946-1972 at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and Department of Arts and Cultural Susan Kozel is a Professor of New Media with the Studies, The University of Copenhagen (2015-2018). School of Arts and Culture at Malmö University ex- Ph.D. with the dissertation There’s no time like the ploring the convergence between philosophy, dance past: Retro between memory and materiality in and digital technologies. She is Project Leader of contemporary culture, The University of Copenhagen, the Living Archives Research Project. Sole authored 2014. [email protected] books include Closer: Performance, Technologies, Phenomenology (MIT Press 2007) and Social Chore- Frida Hastrup, PhD, Associate Professor in Ethnol- ographies: Affect and Encryption in the Performance ogy, the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. of Mobile Media (in process). She is the leader of the research project Natural Goods? Processing Raw Materials in Global Times Marie Laurberg, Curator and Head of Research, (funded by the Danish Council for Independent Re- Louisiana Museum of Modern Art. She has curated search’s Sapere Aude programme), with exhibitions a number of shows with contemporary artists, most as part of its output. It has resulted in co-curated recently Yayoi Kusama – In Infinity. She was curator exhibitions at the National Museum of Denmark of the three years exhibition project Utopia at Arken, and at Moesgaard Museum. With Brichet she has with solo presentations of Olafur Eliasson, Katharina published “Sensationelle trivialiteter – Museer i Grosse, and Qiu Anxiong. She has co-organized vores eksotiske verden” and “Terrestrials in Ruined conferences and seminars on curatorial issues, and Landscapes: Potentials in an Anthropocene Era”. is co-editor of a special issue of Stedelijk Studies, [email protected] Between the Discursive and the Immersive (forthcom- ing). [email protected] Henrik Holm is Curator at Statens Museum for Kunst (the National Gallery of Denmark). Recent publi- Ida Brændholt Lundgaard is Senior Advisor for cations include “The Democratic Future of Museums: Museums at the Danish Agency for Culture and Reflections on a Participatory Project Named “gipSMK Palaces and PhD fellow at Aarhus University. She was - The Royal Cast Collection Goes to Town” in The In- Project Manager of The Communication Plan for Dan- ternational Magazine of The Inclusive Museum (online) ish Museums, 2014-2007, implemented to improve 2014); “Eckersbergs natursyn / Truth in Nature” in: En the educational role of Danish museums in society. smuk løgn. Christopher Wilhelm Eckersberg, (2015); She was Head of Education, Louisiana Museum of “Whip it Good. Kunsthistorie i teori og i praksis, når Modern Art, 1996-2007. Her focus is always on dia- Vesten ikke længere er idealet”, in Quadratura, Skrifter logue, multi-vocality and inclusion aiming at promoting i dansk kunsthistorie, (2016). cultural democracy. [email protected]

Camilla Jalving holds an MA and PhD in Art History Barbara Mahlknecht is a cultural researcher, cura- and is curator at ARKEN Museum of Modern Art, tor, and art educator. She currently holds a position as Denmark. She is the author of Værk som handling: lecturer and researcher at the Academy of Fine Arts Performativitet, kunst og metode (2011) and more re- Vienna. Her work strongly relates to feminist curatorial cently, articles on the artists Randi & Katrine (2015) and practices, the archive and the exhibition as performa- Niki de Saint Phalle (2016). [email protected] tive spaces, socially/politically engaged curatorial practices as well as critical art education. Recently, Rasmus Kjærboe, MA in art history from University she co-curated Uncanny Material. Founding Mo- of Copenhagen, is PhD fellow at Aarhus University ments of Art Education (Academy of Fine Art Vienna, and Ordrupgaard. His PhD project focuses on the 2016) and A Proposal to Call (Kunsthalle Exnergasse development of the early 20th century collection mu- Vienna, 2015).

32 BIOGRAPHIES SPEAKERS AND MODERATORS

Marie Riegels Melchior, PhD, is Assistant Profes- Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn is a research-based sor in European Ethnology at the University of Copen- artist, currently living and working in Stockholm. In hagen. In her research and teaching she focuses on 2011 Nguyễn completed the Whitney’s Independ- the cultural history of fashion, Danish Fashion 1900- ent Study Program, having obtained her MFA and 1965, museum studies and fashion in museums in a post-graduate diploma in Critical Studies from particular. Her recent publications include Fashion and the Malmö Art Academy, Sweden, in 2005. She Museums. Theory and Practice (co-edited with Birgitta has been awarded many grants and fellowships, Svensson, 2014) and Dansk på mode! Fortællinger and her work has been exhibited internationally. om design, identitet og historie i og omkring dansk jacquelinehoangnguyen.com modeindustri (2013). [email protected] Sabine Dahl Nielsen is a postdoctoral fellow at Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer is Research Librarian in KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces and Aalborg the Department of National Collections at The Royal University. Her PhD dissertation Art in Urban Public Library in Copenhagen where she conducts research Spaces: Conflicts and Negotiations as Critical Political in photography and other images as well as curatorial Practices (2015) was conducted at KØS and Copen- work. Recent publications include “The Illustrated hagen University. As part of her PhD she participated Contract between Guaman Poma and the Friends of in the research network Curatorial Knowledge at Blas Valera: A Key Miccinelli Manuscript Discovered in Goldsmiths College under the supervision of Profes- 1998” (with Boserup, N.I) in Boserup, N. I. & Adorno, sor Irit Rogoff. She is author of Det fotografiske rum R. (eds) Unlocking the Doors to the Worlds of Guaman (2011) and has contributed to anthologies, exhibition Poma and his Nueva corónica (2015). [email protected] catalogues and journals. [email protected].

Kirstine Møller, MA student at Sustainable Heritage Temi Odumosu is postdoctoral fellow at the Living Management Aarhus University. Project leader, Nuuk Archives Research Project. Her international research Museum, Kommuneqarfik Sermersooq, Greenland. and curatorial practice is concerned with the visual politics of slavery and colonialism, Africa in the ar- Sidsel Nelund is Head of Institute of Research chives, Afro-Diaspora aesthetics, and more broadly and Interdisciplinary Studies at The Royal Dan- questioning how images influence and challenge ish Academy of Fine Arts. Her recent articles authentic human recognition. Her upcoming book Afri- contri-bute to the discussion of exhibition cans in English Caricature 1769-1819: Black Jokes, analysis (‘Doing Home Works: Extended Exhibi- White Humour will be published in the spring of 2016. tions, Ethnographic Tools, and the Role of the Researcher’ in Critical Arts) and the exhibition as Margareta von Oswald is currently doing her PhD research (‘Home Works’ in Curating Research). at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Her PhD thesis mapped the concept of knowl- Paris and is part of the collaborative research project edge production in contemporary art and she is Making Differences in Berlin: Transforming Museums currently working on the exhibition as both ‘form’ and Heritage in the 21st Century, Humboldt-Univer- and ‘forum’. [email protected] sität zu Berlin. From “behind-the-scenes”, she looks at practices linked to historical African collections in Dr Susanne Neubauer is a curator and re- European ethnographic museums today, focusing searcher. She has curated exhibitions for several on Berlin’s future Humboldt Forum. institutions in Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and Austria and was a lecturer and substitute profes- Jakob Ingemann Parby is a curator and PhD and sor for Art History at Kingston University and HBK currently head of exhibitions in the new Museum of Braunschweig. Her recent publications include “Paul Copenhagen. He has more than 15 years of curatorial Thek in Process” (2012), “Synprozess” / Footnotes experience and has published articles and books on for “Parallelism 2”, Ortszeit (2015) and “Maciunas’s urban history, curatorial practices and the history of Fluxhouses: A Model for Today’s Artistic Economic migration. In 2015 he defended his PhD dissertation Autonomies?” In-Residence Magazine #2 (2015). Migration and identity in Copenhagen 1770-1830, [email protected] planned to be published in 2017.

33 BIOGRAPHIES SPEAKERS AND MODERATORS

Johan Kjærulff Rasmussen is PhD fellow at De- Katarina Stenbeck is a curator currently working on partment of Asthetics and Communication at Aarhus a practice based PhD project on art and eco-crises University. The PhD project is a collaborative project at the Royal Danish Art Academy. She has previously between the university and Museum of Copenhagen worked as a curator at Rooseum in Malmö and Den and entitled We can be actors, not just spectators. He Frie in Copenhagen and as an independent curator has worked for a number of years at Roskilde Festival, with the organisation publik, the exhibition space creating several different user-led and participatory goloss and most recently bureau publik, a project projects. Recent publication: “Participation as Political space for artistic and discursive investigations of life Practice” (online) 2015. [email protected] under neoliberal capitalism.

Lotten Gustafsson Reinius is Professor of Hanne Hammer Stien is a PhD candidate at Ethnology and Curator, Director at Museum of Tromsø Museum and a lecturer at Tromsø Academy Ethnography, Stockholm. Her research interests lie of Contemporary Art/The Arctic University of Norway. at the intersection of expressive culture, media his- She also works as a curator and as an art critic. Her tory and new museology. She has published on the latest publication is Vit at jeg elsker deg: Om kunst sensory biographies of things, the media materiality og sted (Know that I love you: About art and place) of collections and exhibitions among other things. (2014). Her latest curatorial projects are Beyond Recent exhibitions: Magasinet (The Storage), Fetish Horizons (2015), Obsession, and Duty (2015). Modernity. Trine Friis Sørensen is curator and postdoc at Dr Luise Reitstätter is as a cultural scientist Kunsthal Aarhus and Aarhus University (funded by based at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. the New Carlsberg Foundation). She earned her Having worked in the curatorial departments of PhD from University of Copenhagen with the thesis institutions such as documenta 12 and the Austrian We Can (Not) Work It Out: A Curatorial Inquiry into pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, she builds on a vast the Danish Radio Archive (2015). In addition to experience in creating exhibitions and producing curating exhibitions in Denmark and abroad, she art projects. She holds a doctorate in sociology was co-editor of the anthology A Feast Is… (2013), and cultural studies and recently published a book and has published in academic and art publica- on the exhibition as potential sphere of action (Die tions, most recently MASKA Performing Arts Journal. Ausstellung verhandeln, 2015). www.dieangewandte [email protected] [email protected] Karin Tybjerg is associate professor at Medical Merete Sanderhoff is Curator and Senior Advisor Museion, University of Copenhagen. She curated the in digital museum practice at Statens Museum exhibition The Body Collected and has written about for Kunst. She has initiated the Sharing is Car- links between biobanks and anatomical collections. ing seminars in Copenhagen. She has published Previously she held a research fellowship at University substantially in her field, most recently Sharing is of Cambridge and worked as head of Modern History Caring: Openness and Sharing in the Cultural Herit- and Ethnographic Collections at the Danish National age Sector (2014). She serves on several boards, Museum. [email protected] such as the Europeana Foundation Governing Board and Members Council and the OpenGLAM Advisory Robert Willim is a cultural analyst and artist, Associ- Board. [email protected] ate Professor of European Ethnology. His research deals with themes like digital culture, imaginaries and Cyril A. Santos is Museum Researcher II in the materiality, and his artworks are positioned close Anthropology Division, National Museum of the Philip- to his practices as a cultural analyst. Several of the pines. She has been involved in curating, managing works emanate from research questions dealing with and documenting ethnographic collections since imaginaries. More info: www.robertwillim.com 2009. She is also currently completing her MA in Ar- chaeology at the University of the Philippines, Diliman.

34 BIOGRAPHIES SPEAKERS AND MODERATORS BIOGRAPHIES ORGANIZERS

Anne Gregersen is postdoc at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen with affiliation to J.F. Willumsens Museum. Her PhD thesis (2015) was about the late work of Danish artist J.F. Willumsen. Her current research project investigates the phenomenon of artists working as curators within an institutional setting. Recent articles: “Det konceptuelle bade- billede”, I Bølgen Blå, (2016), “Om kunstner-kunstsamlinger, et uhierarkisk kulturarkiv og fasthold- elsen af fortiden”, Shibboleth, Esbjerg Kunstmuseum (TBP 2016). [email protected]

Malene Vest Hansen, PhD, is Associate Professor in Art History at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen. She is PI and founder, with Anne Folke Henning- sen, of Research Network for Studies in the Curatorial, funded by the Danish Council for Independ- ent Research. She is specialized in contemporary art, curatorial and museum studies and has worked as an art critic for decades. Publications include: “Remembering Istanbul: What, How and for Whom? Canons and Archives in Contemporary Art Biennials” (2013); Kuratering af samtidskunst (2011). [email protected]

Anne Folke Henningsen is associate professor in Ethnology at the University of Copenhagen and specialized in museology, cultural heritage, and uses of the past. Initially, her research focused on race and religion in South Africa and then turned to museum studies and colonial heritage through research on living ethnographic exhibitions in Denmark. Currently she is writing a monograph on the use of mannequins in ethnographic exhibitions. Publications in the field include Menneskeudstilling co-authored with Rikke Andreassen (2011). [email protected]

35 XXXXVENUES

University of Copenhagen Karen Blixens Vej 1/ Njalsgade 120 (134) 2300 Copenhagen S

Njalsgade ej V

15 B 11B 13 B Amager Fælledvej 10 11C 12 14 16 21 22 27 Islands Brygge i

Hoved- Karen Blixens 11A indgang 15 A

Karen Blixens Vej Ørestads Boulevard 23

Humanistisk Pavillonerne Fakultets- bibliotek

24 25

Mikado House

Rued Langgaards Vej

Conference Auditorium Building 22 Ground floor Auditorium 22.0.11

Parallel Sessions Building 21 Rooms at ground floor: 21.0.19 and at the first floor: 21.1.15; 21.1.21; 21.1.47

Lunch and coffee will be served next to the Conference Auditorium

Dinner May 26 at 19:00 (pre-registration required) Copenhagen Admiral Hotel, Toldbodgade 24-28, 1254 Copenhagen K

Closing Party May 27 at 17:30-22:00, next to the Conference Auditorium