Curatorial Narrative Research Articles

Curatorial Narrative and Spatial Language in Cultural and Educational Exhibitions

Curatorial Narrative and Spatial Language in Cultural and Educational Exhibitions

Radically revolutionary or pretty flowers? The impact of curatorial narrative of artistic deviance on perceived artist influence.

Radically revolutionary or pretty flowers? The impact of curatorial narrative of artistic deviance on perceived artist influence.

Constructing art history: Contemporary curatorial strategies in studying symbolism of the Baltic states

The article is devoted to the analysis of curatorial strategies used in the international exhibition «Wild Souls. Symbolism in the Baltic States», successfully implemented under the supervision of Rodolphe Rapetti in 2018–2021 in Paris, Tallinn, Vilnus and Riga. Revealing the originality of the curatorial narrative contributes to the identification of current research directions in the study of the Baltic countries visual culture of the 19th–20th centuries. The implemented project has the potential for further revision of generally accepted ideas about the genesis and development of the symbolist art in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This also contributes to the formation and widespread dissemination of methodological approaches that have not been previously used in the art studies of these countries. To understand the novelty of the chosen strategies, historiographical analysis of art in the Baltic countries from the 1940s to the 1980s is carried out. The third conference of art historians of the Baltic republics in 1990 was called a turning point in the history of cultural studies. It is at this scientific event that Boris Bershtein calls for a metaposition and the usage of metalanguage in the construction of an «internal» description of national culture. According to the author of this article, an exhibition «Wild Souls» is intended to become such a metaposition, capable of summarizing the already accumulated knowledge and offering a new look at the development of visual culture. Using universal approaches to the study of symbolism, Rodolphe Rapetti, together with colleagues from Baltic museums, demonstrates the trans-regional community of artistic phenomena that took place in these countries, and also convincingly proves the involvement of the Baltic artists in the general European artistic process at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Museum of Black Civilisations, between History and Utopia

The Museum of Black Civilisations, between History and Utopia

The XXV Años de Paz Española: the invention of a Francoist aesthetics of objectivity and the constitution of a new visual regime of history

ABSTRACT This article explores how the celebration of the XXV Años de Paz in 1964 served as the stage for a new national rhetoric of peace, progress and modernity that allowed the Francoist dictatorship to move away from its fascist past. Through its study of the exhibition España 64 and the movie Franco, ese hombre, this paper explores how the celebration put into circulation what I refer to as a Francoist aesthetics of objectivity – the visual strategies used by the state to create visible indices of progress through statistics and economics as signs of good governmental practice. I challenge this idea with my analysis of the curatorial narrative of the Spanish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair of 1964. Ultimately, this article argues that what took place during the year 1964 was a rearrangement of the national narrative surrounding the Spanish Civil War that allowed the dictatorship to fluctuate between its fascist ideological tenets and pseudo-liberal economic policies and combine them at will. Despite the alleged aperturismo of the 1960s, I propose that the values attached to the Civil War continued to be at the core of the ideology determining the creation and circulation of new national narratives that would constitute a new visual regime of history.

Supplemental Material for Radically Revolutionary or Pretty Flowers? The Impact of Curatorial Narrative of Artistic Deviance on Perceived Artist Influence

Supplemental Material for Radically Revolutionary or Pretty Flowers? The Impact of Curatorial Narrative of Artistic Deviance on Perceived Artist Influence

The Misrepresentation of Hong Kongness

Established in 1962, the Hong Kong Museum of Art was the first public museum in the city. It closed in August 2015 for a four-year renovation and spatial expansion of the facility, and reopened its doors in November 2019. The renovation happened precisely in the interstices of two important historical ruptures in recent Hong Kong history: the Umbrella Movement of 2014 and the ongoing Anti-China Extradition Movement that started in 2019. These movements are redefining the identity of the city and its people in contrast to the conventional Hong Kong cliché of transformation from fishing village to modern financial hub. Without addressing recent changes in cultural identity, the revamped museum rhetorically deploys obsolete curatorial narratives through exhibitions of Hong Kong art. This report critiques the representation of Hong Kongness in the revamped museum and argues that the latter is a soulless entity that overlooks the fact that both politics and art are now reconstructing local identities.

MUSEUM TRAJECTORIES AND PROBLEMS OF EVIDENCE IN PUBLIC DISCOURSE: Introduction to the Special Issue

ABSTRACTAs conservators of heritage and protectors of patrimony, museums are key players in public discourse about national identity and collective memory. The cultural roles and meanings of the museum as an institution are changing in relationship to local and global currents. Factors include the adoption of digital technologies, the repatriation of cultural artifacts, and the opening of new blockbuster museums. This special issue of Museum Anthropology builds upon a nodal taxonomic model for classifying museum practices, audiences, and the organization of evidence. The collected articles juxtapose cross‐cultural case studies drawn from Africa, Europe, and the United States. Topics include the use of evidence in the global circulation of popular African art, discussions of repatriation and decolonization in German museums, the “museum boom” in Poland’s new political climate, and the development of a unique local museum based on minimalist art near the US–Mexican border. The comparative cases demonstrate how museums of different types respond to civic contestations, public debates, and institutional transformations. Curatorial narratives support the use of evidence in contrasting ways as museums build and revitalize their collections. These shifts influence the interpretation of evidence and the display of artifacts both within individual museums and across the global museum landscape.

Bases de mármol para un techo efímero. Preguntas sobre lo que permanece en el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires

En este ensayo nos preguntamos cómo el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires (MNBA) ha venido adquiriendo rasgos modernizadores, eurocéntricos y elitistas desde su fundación en 1896 al día de hoy. Para ello, nos concentramos en las colecciones permanentes —especialmente en la sala 3 de la planta baja— y analizamos la paradoja de su carácter privado en el seno de una institución pública. Mediante el relevamiento de catálogos de los últimos 50 años, análisis de la sala misma y consultas al departamento de Documentación y Archivo, notamos la coerción que ejercen los donantes de colecciones privadas sobre el museo, no solo en el relato curatorial de lo exhibido, sino también sobre lo que se decide no mostrar. En este panorama, nos preguntamos qué posibilidades tiene la institución de tomar decisiones curatoriales y de formación de públicos desde una perspectiva de Estado.

Radically Revolutionary or Pretty Flowers? An Experimental Museum Study of the Impact of Curatorial Narrative Highlighting Artistic Deviance on the Visitor's Assessment of Artist Influence

The importance of curatorial narrative is clear in practice but has not been empirically investigated. We build on recent lab-based research that by embedding target artworks with others meant to highlight the artist’s difference (or ‘deviance’) in terms of new styles, led viewers to judge the artist as more influential. We adapt this paradigm to a museum setting in a field experiment conducted in the Albertina Museum in Vienna (N=216). As a real-life equivalent of the deviance condition, we used an impressionist artwork placed within a temporary exhibition and the same artwork placed within a permanent exhibition as the nodeviance condition. We hypothesized that the artist is considered more influential in the temporary exhibition, and the results confirmed this hypothesis. These findings provide quantification for how curatorial narratives influence whether and when artists are considered influential, beyond the level of didactic extra-exhibit information, and offer guidelines for evidence-based curatorial practices.

The modern art of filmmaking: Architecture on-screen at MoMA

Abstract The 1930s saw the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York become the first museum to include film within its exhibitions of architecture. Although other institutions had offered film screenings for visitors, what set MoMA apart was the manner in which the productions were presented, shown as exhibits within its galleries and displayed alongside photographic reproductions, architectural models and drawings as part of the curatorial narrative. Commissioned in an ad hoc fashion at times and produced to limited budgets, the films brought an emerging form of architectural representation to MoMA at a time when the cultural value of the cinema was still being debated. Under the leadership of Museum Director Alfred J. Barr Jr., the commissioning, curating and collecting of such works became part of a wider movement at MoMA to label the moving image as an art form in its own right.

Modernidade, art brésilien du 20e siècle (Paris, 1987)

A partir de uma análise da narrativa curatorial da exposição Modernidade art brésilien du 20e siècle (Paris, 1987-1988) e da recepção crítica desta na França e no Brasil, pretendemos refletir sobre as possibilidades e os limites de um "modernismo brasileiro" no contexto inicial da globalização da arte, em meados da década de 1980. Esta reflexão pode nos conduzir a uma leitura da história da arte internacional de uma perspectiva brasileira e à compreensão do sistema internacional de arte como um campo simbólico multi-centralizado.

Institutional Engagement and the Growing Role of Ethics in Contemporary Curatorial Practice

In recent years, generating social impact through less conventional curatorial practices has become a primary target and a remit among contemporary and modern art museums in Europe. These particular curatorial practices have involved three characteristics: formulating a new narrative for collection display; involving artists, designers and architects in the creation of these curatorial narratives; and developing forms of institutional engagement with the public. Modern and contemporary art museums are increasingly rethinking the potential role of exhibitions and public programming initiatives to engage substantively with the audience, formulating curatorial research questions that hold an ethical drive. The paper examines and analyses how, in the past few years, ethics has had a strong influence on curatorial practices, leading to new forms of institutional engagement that have fostered social impact. Recently, museum ethics have been reconsidered in the light of more dynamic museum programming, which has ensured the opportunity for all—from artists to the public—to engage with the work of the museum. This paper analyses the influence of ethics on curatorial practice and the features characterising curatorial ethics as a form of institutional engagement shaping either curatorial practice, research questions or research methodologies. Specifically, it investigates Tate Liverpool's curatorial initiatives that have demonstrated how, through different forms of institutional engagement, the museum produces social impact while achieving a new ethical role.

Incident Transgressions: A Review of Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America, 1960–1980, MOMA

By placing on view a large selection of objects recently acquired by the New York Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition Incident Transgressions: Report on “Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1960–1980” (September 5, 2015 to January 3, 2016) sought to situate artistic practices from Latin America and Eastern Europe within a discursive model of cross-cultural and aesthetic transmission. However, the exhibition marginalized an account of the specific relations between these objects in favor of a more encompassing global curatorial narrative. While seeking to outline the parameters of the exhibition, and its implications in regard to contemporary trends in art history and museology, the text aims to highlight some of the instances of transmission and contact, both real and imagined, between the objects displayed.

Creating Virtual Exhibitions for Educational and Cultural Development

The paper presents different tools and mechanisms to implement a virtual exhibition in different cultural areas, such as museums and libraries. Quality characteristics of virtual exhibitions are identified and described. The possibility to create native mobile applications for virtual exhibitions presentation is analyzed. The functional flow of creating a virtual exhibition is presented and discussed. The Seals - History Treasure exhibition is presented and significant historical documents are revealed.Keywords: Virtual, Digital, Exhibition, Mobile, Cultural, Educational1 Introduction - Digital versus VirtualIt must be realized a difference between the digital and virtual concepts. If we talk about digital libraries, then we have in attention electronic libraries, meaning collections of books, journals, thesis, and so on, which are stored in electronic format. If we consider the concept of virtual library, then we have in attention a collection of links that does not reflect physical books, journals, thesis, and so on.In [1] is described the crossover between virtual and physical interactions in smart virtual exhibitions. This approach seems particularly attractive, because it put the focus on the physical heritage and, at the same time, digital capabilities specifically created to fit the personalized user vision and experience.In [2] is presented the theory of virtualization in rapport to exhibition, especially the relation between spatial practice and digital mediation. There are presented concrete examples of virtual exhibitions, which put the theory into practice, by combining exhibition design with digital objects, from multimedia content to virtual objects, using a curatorial narrative in order to offer experience and immersion to visitors.It must be appreciated the Google involvement in the cultural heritage area, by mentioning the Google Art Project [3] and The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls [4]. Google Art Project is a collaborative project between Google and a lot of art partners from across the world, such as museums, libraries, galleries, and different cultural institutes. The Digital Dead Sea Scrolls is another project where Google contribution was extraordinary, because users can examine and explore the most ancient manuscripts from Second Temple times at a level of detail never before possible [4].2 Quality characteristics of Virtual ExhibitionsThe Digital Exhibitions Working Group [5] defined the digital exhibition as an ensemble of interlinks that has the objective to disseminate digital multimedia content, in order to deliver innovative presentations of a concept, and allowing in a great measure the user interaction.A virtual exhibition has the following quality characteristics:- localization, meaning to put the user/visitor in the context and making him familiar with the cultural elements presented;- relevance, in order to attract many visitors to access it and to be attracted about it;- interaction, meaning to give users the possibility to interact with the application rendering the virtual exhibition, for example to make zoom on a picture or to select something in order to get a detailed description;- maintainability, meaning the possibility to being updated every time when new elements appears and must be added to the gallery or when the creators want to enrich the descriptions or correct them;- accessibility, meaning to reach audiences that the physical exhibition never could attend.A virtual exhibition has many of key purposes:- to engage the members of the group in an in-depth, collaborative inquiry;- to provide an opportunity to explore multiple perspectives of a theme;- to inform colleagues and staffof the purpose and general guidelines for the exhibition;- collaborate with others to establish participation (for example, mentors, academics)- schedule a time frame for the inquiry process, including a date for the staging of the exhibition, and book any facilities required;- establish the resources needed, such as internet connection, audio-visual equipment, technology materials and consider budgetary limitations if necessary. …

Visitor Comments as Dialogue

AbstractMuseum use is a process of ideological negotiation, and thus museum users are active agents, not empty vessels waiting to be filled with curatorial narrative. Ensuing dialogues argue over trivia as well as important ethical issues. Discussants take up topics that range over specific public programs, the object maker's motivations and intentions, the choice of a subject, the phrasing of a caption, or the selection of objects on display. These discussions are held in hushed conversations in crowded galleries, in casual conversations within museum hallways, or with animated gestures on the front steps. In the course of this dialogic social practice, each participant's cultural repertoire is enhanced and grows. Every dialogic event is part of a socio‐cultural continuum that will engender other events, with other participants. The comments made by visitors in a visitor comment book are therefore instances of the specificities and the universality of that discussion.

Decolonising the museum: Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration

The collections, exhibiting techniques and events offered at France’s national museum of immigration history are explored through this critical review of Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration (CNHI) at the Palais de la Porte Dorée in Paris. The case study considers the extent to which one of the capital’s newest museums has successfully and sensitively aligned the colonialist architecture of its building – originally constructed for the 1931 World’s Fair – with twenty-first century, postcolonial perspectives on the decolonisation of cultural spaces, and pluralisation of curatorial narratives, to better reflect the histories and lived experiences of diverse audiences.