The quality of artistic and cultural work in Colombia: From the material to the symbolic

The purpose of the article is to provide essential justifications for the validity of the definition of “folklore work”. The main sources were the works of philosophers, culturologists, art historians, and folklorists in the field of definitional analysis of the “work of art” category and directly folklore texts. The research methodology includes a structural and functional approach to the analysis of the features of the existence of artistic texts, a phenomenological and anthropological interpretation of folklore artifacts with the inclusion of elements of textual analysis. The question of terminology in the Humanities is quite acute. The use of terms without an exact designation of their subject field can lead not only to discrepancies, but also to significant errors in understanding the essence of phenomena. Moreover, this may lead to claims that the use of certain terms is incorrect. This is the case with the term “folklore work”, which is used in scientific terms. A number of studies, primarily of art criticism, deny the validity of its application on the grounds that the status of stability of works of art contradicts the variant character of folklore texts. This contrast between constancy and variability is explained by a somewhat simplified view of the phenomena being compared. The basis of the folklore work is avantext, which generates equal variants, but performs the function of a stable image structure. It should be interpreted quite broadly: as a kind of conditional matrix within which elements vary without changing the cultural meaning. This is why folklore works are recognizable, preserved and recreated in each case. This variation, in turn, expands the set framework, filling the tradition with relevant content, enriching it with new artistic images, etc. A similar situation occurs with the author's works of art, which for a long time included improvisational fragments. It is the execution and perception of a literary text (and not just the fact that it is fixed in a sign system) that turns it into a work itself, with the inevitable variability. Of course, these changes are not as obvious as in the case of folklore works, but they do not exclude them. Thus, any work of art does not act as a constant system, but as a phenomenon that is quite mobile in the dynamics of cultural activity. In addition, it should be remembered that a work of art is always the result of a specific activity for the production of artifacts. In this case, any created artifact acts as a work of art or, more generally, a work of culture. Therefore, the creation of an artifact in the sphere of folklore culture is the same artistic production as creativity in the sphere of author's musical culture, literature, painting, etc. The use of the term “folklore work” is not only quite justified, but also corresponds to the essential structural, functional and semantic characteristics of this phenomenon.

Journal Article The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems Get access Bill Nichols Bill Nichols Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Screen, Volume 29, Issue 1, Winter 1988, Pages 22–47, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/29.1.22 Published: 01 January 1988

This article aims to examine how human capital is reflected in the field of care work in Colombia, emphasizing its relevance for the sustainable progress of the country, both before and after the COVID-19 pandemic. A quantitative methodology was employed, conducting a microeconometric model through Mincerian equations with data from the Integrated Household Survey (GEIH) provided by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) for the periods 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2022. The main conclusion highlights the intrinsic relationship between human capital, care jobs, and the Colombian reality, underscoring the complexity and multidimensionality of these aspects. While investment in skill and knowledge development is crucial for the country's advancement, the lack of visibility and recognition of care jobs, despite their critical impact on society, poses a significant challenge.

This doctoral thesis focuses on the relationship between the state and art based on the commission and acquisition of artwork for the interior spaces of public institutions in the territory of the People's Republic (NR) and the Socialist Republic (SR) of Croatia from the early 1950s to the late 1960s. The works of art commissioned from contemporary artists or acquired throughout the 1950s and 1960s for the purpose of interior design of public, or social institutions, as they were called at the time, form a significant, but still largely under-researched, segment of Croatian art history. Commissions, tenders and acquisitions of art have a prominent role in the context of post-war reconstruction and the formation of a new state, as evidenced by the aesthetic quality of some of the completed works, and a vast number of works that have only partially been preserved today or segmentally dealt with in literature, museum documentation and archival material. The number and quality of the works offer themselves today as testimonies of a range of state initiatives in the period from the 1950s to the 1960s especially those that were launched in order to ensure that a percentage of investment construction funds in the entire Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia (FNRJ), that is, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) was used for the acquisition of artworks. In addition, the artistic quality also represents the artist's active consideration and commitment to the adoption of the so-called synthesis of all arts. This concept signified a unification of architecture, fine arts and design into a unique, total work of art. Since the artworks in this thesis primarily relate to paintings and sculptures commissioned or acquired for buildings of representative public characteristics, the research focused primarily on artistic furnishing of public interiors (governmental, cultural, sports and health institutions, military, tourist, catering and transportation facilities, and factories, company branches and banks) which have been analysed within the context of Yugoslav social ownership and a range of legal acts and by-laws passed in the researched period. The corpus of artworks on which the research was conducted includes a wide scope of media and different functions of buildings, and since the largest client was the state, i.e. state administration, institutes, associations, cooperatives, companies and other institutions financed from the state budget, the research topic and interpretation have been subject to a broad historical, cultural and artistic analysis. The first chapter (Introduction) provides an overview of previous research directly or indirectly linked to the topic of the thesis, the sample and methodology as well as research limitations, which have mostly been related to the issue of availability of archival documents. The chapter concludes with the research goal and hypotheses. The hypotheses are the following: 1) the acquisition and commission of artwork in Yugoslavia and the Republic of Croatia during the 1950s and 1960s were initiated and heavily regulated by the state; 2) the concept of artistic synthesis, or more specifically, the integration of architecture and fine arts, is advocated on all levels of government administration and state institutions that were responsible for culture and art; 3) cultural policy, ideological agendas of the state and the type of public institution impact the use of iconographic, formal and stylistic features of artworks and the level of the artistic synthesis; 4) due to their number, quality and socio-political circumstances the acquired and commissioned artworks for public interiors in the 1950s and 1960s represent an important segment in Croatian art history. The second chapter of the thesis (Socio-historical context and cultural policy of FNRJ/SFRJ and NR/SR of Croatia) presents the socio-historical and political context in Croatia and Yugoslavia between the Second World War and the 1970s. The chapter explains the definitions of ideology, culture and cultural policy that form the basis of the state's political decisions of the time as well as a political and cultural framework from within which the artworks have been analysed. The chapter ends with a brief overview of the cultural policies in the People's /Socialist Republic of Croatia and the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia or, the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which includes the period of the so-called agitprop culture, an institutional implementation of cultural policy in the 1950s and 1960s and the reforms and censorship of the early 1970s. Within the legislative framework, the Yugoslav cultural policy objectives were to protect cultural heritage, incentivise the production of artworks through the organisation of events and otherwise, supervise and educate artists, experts and cultural workers, while maintaining control of the entire field of artistic and intellectual creativity. The development of cultural policies from the end of the Second World War to the early 1970s had several phases. In the first phase, from 1945 to 1951/1952, also called the period of "agitprop culture," the Yugoslav cultural policy exercised strict supervision and intense ideological pressure on culture. This could be felt in the production, acquisitions and commissions of artworks especially during 1948 and 1949, when the acquired art represented predetermined partisanship, particular ideas and connective affinities among all Yugoslav peoples. In other words, the socially engaged message of these works could be interpreted in a rather straightforward fashion. The second phase of Yugoslav cultural policy came after the temporary cessation of Agitprop (until the reactivation of the Ideology Committee). Although this phase saw a gradual liberalization, decentralization and bureaucratization of the artistic and cultural field of production, especially after the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (1952), in the 1950s and 1960s Yugoslav cultural policy was completely dependent on the state-party policy, which meant that state's cultural institutions exercised exclusive control of the field. This also meant there were coexisting tendencies – one was an increased openness towards expressions of high modernism - abstract and new post-war figurative forms, especially in public art and monuments, and the other was the retention of a clear ideological and memorial function of art, very often manifested as socialist realism. Following the early liberalization process and lowered ideological pressure, the early 1950s saw an individualization of artistic expression, and various works of art of moderate and radical modernist tendencies appeared on the art scene, which, despite numerous debates and resistance, were supported by the state through exhibitions, scholarship, public acquisition and commission. In the early 1960s, the highest echelons of the government denounced the dominant position of abstract art, which in 1962 and 1963 led to changes in the acquisition policy. The restricted freedom of artistic expression did not, however, continue in the second half of the decade when the state encouraged both institutionally and financially the development of art that could be characterised as supporting modernist tendencies. The third chapter of the thesis provides an overview of the post-war art in Croatia, or more specifically, an overview of artistic developments and debates, cultural and political upheavals and overviews of artistic forms, styles and movements, mostly socialist realism and abstract art, which marked the post-war art scene and which were particularly significant in the context of the commission and acquisition of artworks for the interior spaces of specific state institutions. The overview begins with the cultural and political context of post-war art and a series of important speeches by statesmen and artists on the role and position of art - from adherence to the ideological program of the state to the freedom of artistic creation. The chapter also gives an account of important exhibitions that served as testing grounds for the affirmation of new artistic expressions and events that spurred a number of critical reviews. These exhibitions include Archaic Surrealism (1952) by Antun Motika, Miljenko Stančić and Josip Vaništa (1952), American Experience (1953) by Edo Murtić, the exhibition of painters from the EXAT 51 group (1953), Salon 54 (1954) and the 1 st Didactic Exhibition: Abstract Art (1957). One segment of the chapter provides a brief overview and definitions of artistic forms, styles, movements and protagonists in post-war art in Croatia, while other focus more on the ideological aspects of socialist realism and abstract art and their significance concerning the specific geopolitical position of Yugoslavia. The fourth chapter, entitled The Synthesis of Fine Arts – the Development of the Concept and Its Influence on Art in Public Interiors in the 1950s and 1960s in Croatia, deals with the history of the concept "synthesis of fine arts" from the 19th century to the 1960s, particularly focusing on the post-war period in the international context and the Socialist Republic of Croatia. It was a complex idea that most often implied the unification of architecture, design and applied arts, painting and sculpture into a unique work of art. The chapter provides an explanation of the institutional framework of the concept of synthesis, and based on the research of archival material and the then-current periodicals it offers a reconstruction of the debates about the synthesis of all arts that took place during artists' meetings, at exhibitions and conferences and in magazines published in the period in question. It also highlights the significance of the synthesis of fine arts in the theoretical concept of gestalt theory. The fifth chapter, entitled Instruments of the Acquisition and Commission of Artworks for the Interiors of Public Institutions in the Territory of the People's/ Socialist Republic of Croatia in the 1950s and 1960s offers an unprecedentedly thorough reconstruction and explanation of the role of institutionalized cultural activities in the 1950s and 1960s (state administration, foundations, academies, state master workshops and professional associations and cooperatives) in the history of acquisition and commission policies regarding artworks in Yugoslavia and Croatia. The chapter goes on to explore in detail the state acquisition and commissioning process and the instruments, the impact of cultural policy on the acquisition and commission of artworks in the context of the expenditures for culture from the annual federal /republican budget, in the context of cultural and socio-political developments and legal acts and by-laws on the allocation of a percentage for artworks within investment construction project budgets. An important aspect of the chapter represents the investigation into the work of acquisition committees at the federal, republican and local levels of government, which often decided the fate of artists, the allocation of funds to numerous museum and gallery institutions, but also influenced the visual presentation of government in public buildings. The composition of the committees was also indicative of and depended on the country's cultural policy. In the post-war period, the committees were often made up of state administration employees, people imposed by the party, but also experts in culture such as art historians. In the early 1950s, they were largely made up of visual artists, and members of professional art associations who were sometimes accused of irregularities in following the procedures of purchasing and commissioning artworks. Apart from the association, the commissioning process was also greatly influenced by the State's Master Workshops as independent institutions which, due to considerable grants, favourable working conditions and the buildings they owned, were the only ones able to realize large orders, and thus influence the form and content of the works. Attempts to regulate the aforementioned instruments were the subject of numerous debates, as well as proposals for regulations, decrees and recommendations, especially during the 1950s. Considering the proliferation of proposals and legal acts in a single decade, artistic commissions and acquisitions for the interiors of public institutions embody a dynamic relationship between art and the state. The sixth and biggest chapter of the thesis offers a typology of artworks commissioned and acquired for public buildings of various functions. Sub-chapters contain an analysis and interpretation of a considerable number of diverse works of art situated in the interiors of administrative, military and educational institutions, cultural, and health institutions, catering establishments, shops, branches of banks and post offices, transport infrastructure facilities, factories, associations and societies, tourist architecture and residences of the President of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Although the typology has been created based on several criteria, including the type of work, location, client and motivation for the integration of art and architecture, the research of archival and museum documentation, periodicals, in situ buildings and previous research is given in sub-chapters by the type of public institutions in order to combine in one place the similarities and differences of artworks situated in the interiors of particular institutions that depended on socio-political circumstances. Each function of the building is presented within its context, with numerous examples which represent an overview of acquisitions and commissions for the interior, an example selected for its aesthetic and sociopolitical significance, which provides an in-depth analysis and interpretation of the work. They are also presented through a comparative example in other Yugoslav republics. At the end of the chapter, there is a short list of examples divided according to the proposed typology. At the very end, in addition to the list of references, the doctoral dissertation includes appendices (various archival documents) and a list of works in the interiors of public institutions in Croatia in the 1950s and 1960s. The list contains known information about the location, author, year, type of work and technique, client, selected works of literature related to the work, and a photograph (if the work has been preserved or if there is photo documentation). Additionally, each work has a note related that usually includes information about the architect of the building, the collaborators and the degree of preservation of the work. The research carried out for this thesis has resulted in the first comprehensive analysis, contextualisation, interpretation and valorisation of artworks produced for public interiors in Croatia in the 1950s and 1960s. It also provides an insight into the role of the state as a client, and numerous aspects of cultural and acquisition policies that have not been addressed so far. New information is provided about numerous unknown or lesser-known works of painting and sculpture commissioned and acquired for the interiors of public institutions. Consequently, the results include the attribution and dating of ten artworks. The contribution of the research comes in the form of typology and a list of artworks in the interiors of public institutions that were commissioned or acquired in the 1950s and 1960s with some examples from the 1940s and 1970s). The systematization and interpretation of the material and the critical analysis of primary and secondary sources expand on the previous knowledge about the art of the 1950s and 1960s and fragmentarily researched works of art.

La aplicación de los principios y derechos fundamentales en materia del mundo del trabajo como parte esencial del proteccionismo laboral dentro de los criterios de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT) sobre el trabajo decente, debe prevalecer en el proceso laboral para que la justicia sea garante de su aplicabilidad. A partir de la metodología del análisis documental se abordará elementos conceptuales sobre justicia social, trabajo decente y principios y derechos fundamentales en el mundo de trabajo, como elementos estructuradores para la construcción del trabajo decente en Colombia.

Inciting Reflection

This is a wide-ranging interview with Augustine Mok Chiu-yu. It focuses on topics including film exhibition in Hong Kong of political films from across the globe and the making of independent and experimental cinema in Hong Kong. This contributes to an assessment of Hong Kong left-wing cinema in the 1970s that transcends and moves beyond the limiting boundaries of the US-Soviet Union Cold War discourse. Mok discusses his own role and history in producing and screening of progressive films in Hong Kong during this period. Augustine Mok Chiu-yu was a founding member of The 70’s Biweekly, an independent youth magazine first published on the first day of 1970. He was a social/political activist in The 70’s but he became more a cultural activist involved in writings and cultural work in subsequent years. He moved into theatre, performance art and community cultural development work and has performed in the US, UK, Poland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Kathmandu, Bangla Desh, Myanmar Republic, South Korea etc. He has organized many cross-cultural projects that toured in Asia and Europe. He won the first ever Award for Theatre of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council for the year 1998 and has been a great promoter in arts and disability, community arts and community cultural development in Hong Kong. He helped to found the Hong Kong International Deaf Film Festival and has been its hearing organizer for the 12 editions of the Festival. He was the producer of the 35 mm film entitled An Open Letter to Hong Kong’s Literary Youth and the documentary Black Bird - A Living Song. He has acted in Life and Times of Ng Chung Yin (Evans Chan), Ordinary Heroes (Ann Hui), Port Unknown (Mamunur Rashid), and N+N (Mo Lai).

A postage stamp is principally used to demonstrate that postage has been paid. However, governments also use postage stamps to convey various messages to the world, and the message the stamp contains reaches many people. Therefore, postage stamps are frequently used to embrace and disseminate an idea or belief, to convey information to a target audience, or to announce or promote an event. Additionally, philately (or stamp collecting) remains a popular hobby. Stamp collectors, who consider stamps as works of art, meticulously collect, classify, and scrutinize the details linked to stamps. Philately also has deep ties to the Olympic games. Olympic postage stamps, which were first introduced to offer financial assistance in organizing the 1896 Athens Olympics, have also served the purpose of promoting the Olympics at the international level. Furthermore, the works of ancient Greek culture and art were admirably depicted on the first Olympic postage stamps. These stamps, which also contribute to the revival of the Olympics, have rich symbolic meanings behind their visuals.

These workshops arose out of a request from a Ugandan colleague, who had been working with victims of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war 1988-2004, started by Joseph Kony and rebel forces. She and her colleagues felt some direct work on anger would be helpful. Most of the anger being expressed has arisen from people’s experiences in the LRA wars. Boys and girls were abducted and recruited into the LRA army and taught how to kill; they suffered beatings and watched brothers and sisters die at the hands of the LRA. If they were able to escape, they returned home only to find that often their parents had been killed by the LRA and their houses burnt down. Clearly any short-term training could not remove the causes of the huge anger that has built up. So the focus of this training was to introduce strategies of handling anger so that people did not make things worse for themselves. Case studies and examples of participants’ art work are included. The article also reflects on the relevance of such work in cultures where both art work and therapy are not very usual or available, and whether such work can be sustainable. Key words: conflict, Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), trauma, Uganda, war

Review of Vital Decomposition: Soil Practitioners and Life PoliticsKristina M.Lyons. Duke University Press, Durham and London. 2020. 218 pp. ISBN: 9781478007692 (hardcover). US$25.95

This article examines global care chains as juridical formations – legal arrangements that organise the extraction of reproductive labour within constitutional orders that privilege economic accumulation over social reproduction. Drawing on original data and ethnographic fieldwork in Tumaco, a historically marginalised Afro-Colombian territory on Colombia’s Pacific coast, we follow the intergenerational care work of Nelly, a grandmother raising her grandchildren while her daughters migrate to perform care work in Colombia and abroad. Through this lens, we explore how Latin American constitutionalism, despite its transformative aspirations, often fails to account for the informal, racialised, and territorially dispersed nature of care. While recent reforms have begun to acknowledge care as a public concern, constitutional frameworks frequently limit this recognition to formal declarations. Engaging feminist political economy and critical legal theory, and foregrounding the material conditions of care in contexts marked by precarity and state absence, we develop the concept of everyday infrastructures of extractive constitutionalism to describe how reproductive labour remains essential yet persistently invisibilised. From Tumaco’s constitutional margins, we show how care work sustains both economic and legal life, advancing a longstanding call from feminist scholars and women’s movements to reorient constitutional thinking around the labour that makes life possible.

The main objective of this paper is to analyze the effect of education, age, access to ICTs and physical and financial assets, as well as other personal and socio-economic characteristics on the probability of being a formal or informal own-account worker. In order to achieve this purpose, information will be used at the urban level for the twenty-one main cities in Colombia from the Great Integrated Household Survey 2010 (GISH), by the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) and the Colombian Longitudinal Survey of the University of the Andes 2013 (CLS). Based on these data, models that have a qualitative binomial and multinomial dependent variable are employed, correcting for selection bias. As main results, it was found that physical assets and access to credit have a positive marginal effect on the probability of being an own-account worker. On the other hand, the marginal effect of education was negative; the lower the educational level, the greater the probability of self-employment, especially regarding the informal work.

<p class="StinkingStyles">В статье анализируются основные положения зарубежных исследований экранных произведений в рамках телесно-ориентированного подхода. Рассматриваются философские работы А. Бергсона, М. Мерло-Понти, Д. Кампера, У. Матурана, Б. Массуми, Ф. Варела, М. Хансена и др. На основе телесно-ориентированного подхода и концепции «телесно воплощенной симуляции» в статье рассматривается роль аффективного, телесного опыта при интерпретации аудиовизуальных произведений. Утверждается, что сама «визуальность» мира формируется скорее внутренними телесными элементами, нежели абстрактной властью взгляда, причем именно тело зрителя и его активность задают условия для восприятия образов.</p><p class="StinkingStyles">Анализируется новый тип чувствования, когда субъект определяется отнюдь не разумом, но своей телесностью, именно она центрирует и конституирует его. Телесный уровень чувствования, аффективное переживание/опыт полнее и аккуратнее отражают характеристики индивидуальности, нежели процессы на более высоких уровнях сознания, как правило, подлежащих/подчиненных в своей работе разнообразным опосредующим режимам сигнификации. В результате человеческое тело воздействует само на себя через собственную аффектацию, производя внутреннее эмоциональное пространство «я», не ограниченное перцепцией или работой какого-либо отдельного органа чувств.</p><p class="StinkingStyles">Теория «телесной симуляции» обеспечивает научные, нейробиологические основания для понимания специфики взаимодействия между зрителем, автором и экранным произведением. Обсуждаются возможности мультисенсорного восприятия образов кинематографических произведений. Предлагается рассматривать рецепцию произведения как процесс зрительского действования в иллюзорной и пространственно локализируемой среде.</p><p class="StinkingStyles">Визуальные образы расширяют возможности самореализации зрителя посредством телесной активности, делают разнообразнее его «внутренние действия» в перцептивном (аффективном) опыте проживания «внутреннего пространства». Воспринимая произведение, зритель энактивирует экранное пространство, открывая для себя возможности действий собственного тела. Восприятие понимается в его синкретичной связи с действием, психомоторной активностью (активностью психики и тела) и активностью ума, концептуализацией. Даже ментальная активность понимается как действие или как движение.</p><p class="StinkingStyles">Делается вывод о том, что проблема телесности, «телоцентризма», «соматизма» выходит на передний план искусствоведческой и в целом гуманитарной рефлексии, поскольку позволяет искать пути преодоления смысловой избыточности культурных объектов и художественных произведений. </p>

Reviewed by: Modernism and Food Studies: Politics, Aesthetics, and the Avant-Garde ed. by Jessica Martell et al. Gregory Castle (bio) Modernism And Food Studies: Politics, Aesthetics, and the Avant-Garde, edited by Jessica Martell, Adam Fajardo, and Philip Keel Geheber. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2019. 336 pp. $85.00. One of the more recent turns in modernist studies has been toward food and its consumption, a trend that is well represented in Modernism and Food Studies, which focuses on food aesthetics, culinary traditions and the challenges to them, the production and consumption of foodstuffs, and the concept of foodways, which Graig Uhlin, in his chapter on film, describes as the "entire life cycle of food" from [End Page 560] raw materials to sale and consumption (215). The emphasis throughout the volume falls on the "material reality of food," particularly "the cultural work" growing out of this reality, the "attitudes, perceptions, fantasies, beliefs, aesthetics, representations" that are themselves powerful determinants of the production of and access to food and foodways (5). The first section, "Aesthetics and the Body" (17-87), deals with a common motif in food studies, the act of incorporation. In the work of Oscar Wilde and Joris-Karl Huysmans, incorporation starts out as a form of introjection only to become, once aestheticism shades into decadence, "an object not of pleasure but of disgust" (26). The idea of the culinary thus "comes to signify the impossibility … of satisfying desires" (32). In chapters on Katherine Mansfield and Ford Madox Ford (39-55, 72-87), simple food objects become opportunities for meditations on art and reality. Aimee Gasston finds in Mansfield's writing about eggs a feminist aesthetics and an "incorporative" artistic practice that "gathers material ingredients [in order to] reproduce them as an aesthetic whole" (40),1 while Bradford Taylor finds, in Ford's "queer thoughts when digging potatoes,"2 a "pastoral idyll" that "reverses the conventional understanding of taste, rooted in Kantian aesthetics," and answers the question as to the purpose of art: "to render [the] queer effects of real life" (74, 77, 79). Randall Wilhelm's chapter on Ernest Hemingway's still lifes in A Moveable Feast makes much the same point about the casual arrangements of food and drink that reveal "fears of emasculation and sexual inadequacy through object matter that presses itself into the body and mind of his narrated self" (56-71, 67).3 In this case, food is more likely to connote projection rather than incorporation. The three chapters in the second section on "Cookbooks" focus on modernist experiments in culinary writing (89-146). As Sean Mark and Céline Mansanti show, Futurist food texts, such as Jules Maincave's Manifeste de la cuisine futuriste and Filippo Marinetti and Fillìa's The Futurist Cookbook,4 sought "to disrupt reigning gastronomic traditions" by presenting recipes for outlandish, often inedible dishes (91). Alice B. Toklas, according to Shannon Finck, may have had a more durable artistic impact in The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book,5 which also sought to disrupt culinary tradition. Finck traces a "queer lineage of food writing," which forms the basis of a "renegade autobiography" that "challenges the primacy of [Gertrude] Stein's narrative of their relationship" (129). The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book is both a work of art and a critique of conventional foodways for, according to Finck, Toklas "queers the colonizing impulse behind a globalized cuisine by imbuing it with a liberatory politics" (140). Section III, on "Globalization, Nationalism, and the Politics of Provenance" (147-210), offers three very different ways of talking [End Page 561] about global foodways. David A. Davis writes about James Agee and Walker Evans's Cotton Tenants: Three Families,6 a study of sharecroppers originally published in Fortune, "a magazine that appeals to corporate civilization" (170). According to Davis, Agee, "a liberal intellectual artist" (170), sought in the magazine piece, as well as the expanded version published as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,7 to reveal "the myriad ways in which [the sharecroppers] are trapped within a cycle of production and consumption" (172). Philip Keel Geheber offers a second approach in his analysis of Marcel Rouff's La vie et la...

The Contemporary Art & World Civilization Department of Bangladesh National Museum is holding a crucial position in ensuring the preservation and promotion of our contemporary cultural heritage and works of art. This study aims to assess the role and contributions of the Contemporary Art & World Civilization Department of Bangladesh National Museum in the context of the acquisition and preservation of the history and heritage of Bengal through analysis of gathered artifacts and input from diverse sources, including general visitors, civil society, field experts, and researchers. Additionally, this research seeks to identify potential avenues of future growth and development within the department. Firstly, the matter of expanding gallery space and separating the department may be taken into consideration. The acute lack of space within the main museum warrants a separate building or branch museum to be able to house the large collection of the department. The security devices must also be functional. Secondly, as the research findings suggest, this department houses a considerable number of delicate works of art. Conservation of these artifacts is of utmost importance. Thirdly, the gallery walls of this department require renovation. And lastly, the matter of storage management is of utmost importance. Many priceless artifacts may be harmed after being exposed to elements or due to improper storage management. It is necessary to better equip the storage with relevant technology and train conservation officers in managing them. The findings of this study will offer valuable insights to the general public, civil society, experts, and researchers, and contribute to the enhancement of the department’s activities.