Creating Global Citizens? Museums, the Nation and the World
The first ICP research seminar of 2011 takes place on 3rd February.
Professor Peggy Levitt (Wellesley College and Harvard University) will discuss the response of museums to the competing pulls of globalisation and nationalism in the 21st century.
4pm - 6pm, 3rd February, Hanson Room, Humanities Bridgeford Street
This seminar has been jointly organised with CHIMERA Cultural Heritage, Identity and Memory Research Area.
A poster containing further details
Centre for Museology Spring Seminars 2011
Monday 21st February 2011, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Professor Piotr Bienkowski, University of Manchester
Developing a radical vision for the North West's museums
Monday 21st March 2011, 5-6.30pm , Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Dr Colin Trodd, Art History and Visual Studies, University of Manchester
William Blake has entered the building; or, stories of Blakean masterliness in British art galleries, 1876-1959
Monday 4th April 2011, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Dr Claire Wintle, Lecturer, History of Art and Design, University of Brighton
What the visitor thought: Situating the historical visitor at Brighton Museum, 1900-1945
Everyone Welcome!
For further information please contact: Christopher.Plumb-2@manchester.ac.uk.
Centre for Museology Spring Seminars 2011
Monday 21st February 2011, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Piotr Bienkowski, Consultant, academic and chairman of the NWFED
Developing a radical vision for the North West's museums
If ever there was a time for museums to think radically, it is now. In late 2010 the North West Fed, which represents museum people across north-west England, launched an online strategic 'visioning document'. Set in the context of financial cuts to museums and the dissolution of existing strategic structures, its purpose is to urge and support museums to address the key priorities of national and local government, adopt new models of working, and to be innovative, creative and flexible in order to survive and thrive. To keep our heads down and hope it will all blow over is not an option: the scale of change is such that things will never be the same again.
As Chair of the North West Fed, Piotr Bienkowski led this process, negotiating a partnership with the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA), Renaissance North West and National Museums Liverpool. In this lecture he describes the vision and the process of developing it, including the political difficulties and consultations, and challenges the HE sector to respond to the changing museum world.
Piotr Bienkowsk is a cultural, heritage and museums consultant, writer and researcher, Honorary Professor in the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester, and Chair of the North West Fed. Previously he has been Acting Director of The Manchester Museum and Head of Antiquities at National Museums Liverpool.
Monday 21st March 2011, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Dr Colin Trodd, University of Manchester
William Blake has entered the building; or, stories of Blakean masterliness in British art galleries, 1876-1959
The story of how cultural institutions deal with the afterlife or reconstruction of artistic identity has for a long time been overshadowed by the symbolic value of canon formation: a tale of how styles, periods or forms of innovation or experimentation cohere into stable patterns or structures of meaning. In fact, most studies of the processes by which artistic value is institutionalised reveal a different picture: of complex critical fields coloured by a number of factors including interaction of cultural forces, social relations and modes of subjectivity. This semi-hidden world of engagement and judgement is the main focus of a paper that examines the reformative apparatus that enabled curators, critics and collectors to imagine Blake as a masterly artist. In essence, this paper sets out to answer one of the central questions in Blake studies: how can we explain his transformation from an unrepeatable or toxic subject into a complete angelus of modern culture?
Colin Trodd is a Lecturer in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester. He is the co-editer of Victorian Culture and the Idea of the Grotesque (Ashgate, 1999); Art and the Academy in the Nineteenth Century (MUP, 2000); Governing Cultures: Art Institutions in Victorian London (Ashgate, 2000); Representations of G.F. Watts: Art Making in Victorian Culture (Ashgate, 2004) and author of Visions of Blake: William Blake in the Art World, 1830-1930 (LUP, 2011).
Monday 4th April, 5-6.30pm, Mansfield Cooper 4.10
Dr Claire Wintle, University of Brighton
What the visitor thought: Situating the historical visitor at Brighton Museum, 1900-1945
Critiques of 'official' interpretations developed by public institutions and curators tell us much about the histories of academic thought and the intended approaches of such organisations. This paper, however, will focus on how these official agendas were actually received in practice, emphasising the extent to which discrepancies between intended meaning and popular understanding of museum displays occurred. It will use a discussion of visitor engagement with non-European material cultures in the provincial museum to critique the assumption of the pervasive nature of curatorial control of audience reception; I explore instead how museum publics form individual responses to cultural heritage, sometimes rejecting official interpretation and drawing upon wider cultural references and experiences.
Dr Claire Wintle is a Lecturer in the History of Art and Design at the University of Brighton. She has an MA in Art Gallery & Museum Studies at the University of Manchester (2003-4) and has taught at the University of Sussex since 2006. She has worked in collections and public programmes at the Walker Art Gallery, World Museum Liverpool and the Museum of Science and Industry. She has recently published in Victorian Studies and the History Workshop Journal.