Saturday, October 29, 2011

Tasmanian Shells




Exhiting by Inventory Number

Photo by Marc Domage.


Frac Haute-Normandie
3, place des Martyrs-de-la-Résistance
76300 Sotteville-lès-Rouen, France
Click here to visit online: www.frachautenormandie.org

As part of its events programme, Frac Haute-Normandie is offering visitors the chance to take stock of its collection. Every year at the start of the season in September, works from the catalogue will be exhibited according to their inventory number. Though something of a mystery to the general public, this number is crucial in that it identifies each work according to the order in which it entered the collection. Quite apart from the system's legal basis, this specific identifier is an invaluable source of information in compiling the history of the Frac Catalogue. L'Inventaire takes these code numbers in chronological order to explore the underlying rationale and connections. Accordingly, the first installment will begin with Frac Haute-Normandie's very first acquisition. L'Inventaire will continue anew every year until the last number in the catalogue is reached. 
Véronique Souben, Director, Frac Haute-Normand

There is always another way to imagine something!
In fact there are lots of them! 

Sunday, October 23, 2011

SO THE GAME HAS SHIFTED ... Where did it go to?



A few years ago, some state or private-funded places, in France as well as abroad, have started to develop digital versions of their collections: the virtual Louvre, the Tate Modern, the Moma, the SFMOMA. Indeed, for the past few years, these digital tools, shared by many, have changed the way the public interacts with artworks.

This is the CNAP’s collection’s challenge: to display and to give the public access to the its artworks, in order to build up a virtual centre. The aim is to create a new space to exhibit and to broadcast, for in-residencies, publication, specific artwork commissions (video, multimedia, sound). It aims to constitute a digital architecture, a space for thought on contemporary artwork. This could lead to curating propositions and editing projects.

Pierre Giner’s CNAPN project uses the new ways of approaching the Internet and new information and communication technologies. A true virtual architecture conceived in collaboration with Patrick Bouchain – in this way, this project is not a simple website or a mere database - “CNAPN” is a new multidisciplinary and creative tool that starts a dialogue between the arts and disciplines.

Calling up IT and intellectual resources from IT research, Pierre Giner’s project is innovative because it shifts research in one specific field to another area, using appropriation and transformation: the collections generator is also a sort of video game – from the ‘serious games’ category, quite trendy in the cultural industries – diverted from its primary use and placed into modern creation’s field, thus creating new ways to socialize.

flickr ... The ONline PHOTOmuseum

GLOBALLY: The Museum Public/The Public Museum


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"Recent changes in society, globalization, and the increasing significance of the media are a mix that presents the museum of the 21st C with new challenges. The museum’s role as a public space demands redefinition. In this context, more and more importance is being attached to communication and mediation. The impact of these developments on the museum of contemporary art is the subject of a new series of MMK talks: MUSEUM PUBLIC."

THE GLOBAL MUSEUM: (Wed, 26. Oktober, 7 pm, MainTor) The major museums are expanding and opening branches all over the world.
  • What are the consequences of such franchising and the exportation of museological competence to new “markets”? 
  • Will art become more international and more diverse, or will it assimilate globally? 
  • How important is it to respond to these developments by strengthening national and regional networks?
Guests: Penelope Curtis  (1962), since 2010 Director Tate Britain, London
Tobias Berger (geb. 1969), Curator M+ Museum for Visual Culture, Hong Kong  

Moderation: Peter Gorschlüt

 FURTHER ISSUES FOR 2011:Tue, 29. November The Museum as Publisher ... Increasingly, artists and museums are taking over the role of publisher and mediator of their own production. Alongside classical forms of distribution the Internet and social media are becoming ever more significant, thus defining new publics.

Tue, 13. December, Public / Private ... Owing to changes in economic and societal structures, the relationship between private commitment and the public education mandate has also undergone transformation. What role does art patronage play today? Do private collectors and the more frequently established collectors' museums have any influence in the mediation of art and the development of ”trends” How is the relationship of private collectors, the ever more frequently established collectors’ museums and public institutions?

Tue, 17. January, The Museum as Producer of Social Reality ... The museum as place for the preservation and presentation of art is developing into an institution which not only mirrors society but also produces societal realities to an ever increasing degree itself, and thus inscribes itself into the social context of its respective urban environment. Its production can take place anytime and anyplace, is no longer tied to a building or specific opening hours, and seeks its public and themes outside institutional boundaries.

Tue, 16. February, The Artist Museum ... Since the advent of modernism, artists have addressed themselves to the question of what constitutes a museum. What role does the museum play in the definition of art, how does it change their significance, what makes up a collection? Artists who investigate such matters and develop them further with their work, talk about the relevance of the museum for contemporary art. 

All MMK Talks will be held in English ... A Cooperation of Hochschule für Darstellende Künste Städelschule and MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main. The series of lectures is supported by: Deutcher Bank Stiftung




 

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Tasmanian Birds

A site for the incurably curious and especially those curious about birds

Independent Curators International: New Ways To Imagine Curatorship




  Independent Curators International (ICI)



IMAGE: Clockwise from top left: participants in the Curatorial Intensive; Kalia Brooks, director of exhibitions, MoCADA, and independent curator Michal Novotny; partial view of the Curatorial Hub; gallerist Janice Guy, artist Valerie Tevere, and independent curator Regine Basha.


The Curatorial Hub, Independent Curators International, 401 Broadway, Suite 1620 New York, NY 10013

 About Independent Curators International
 (ICI): Independent Curators International produces exhibitions, events, publications, and training opportunities for audiences around the world. Established in 1975 and headquartered in New York, the organization is a hub that provides access to the people and practices that are key to current developments in the curatorial field.

This November, ICI inaugurates the Curatorial Hub, a flexible project space for curators to use as a meeting point and platform for public debate.

Over the last two decades curating in the visual arts has transformed from a little-known profession to a global industry. As the number of people entering the field has increased internationally, the role of the curator has also expanded to contextualize art practices within broadening social, political, and cultural frameworks.

Responding to these transformations, ICI has established the first permanent space in the United States dedicated to making public the fast-growing developments in curatorial thinking. Housed in a new 2,500 square-foot facility in the heart of Tribeca, the Curatorial Hub is an event forum and temporary operational base for curators from across the U.S. and the world to use when they are in New York.

Intended as a place for public discussion, including roundtables, symposia, screenings, and lectures, as well as hosting ICI's reference library and Curatorial Intensive training programs, the Curatorial Hub builds on ICI's long history of working with curators to investigate and present the latest developments in international art practice.

In the last 36-years, over 1,000 curators and 3,700 artists from 47 countries have worked with the organization to produce traveling exhibitions, publications, and events. In the last two years ICI has also developed an online platform that includes a new quarterly journal, DISPATCH, authored by curators on issues affecting contemporary art where they live and work, and The Curator's Network, a membership program that offers up-to-date information on jobs and other opportunities, as well as access to information on emerging curatorial ideas and projects.

While these portals provide much-needed connection between dispersed communities of curators, ICI's Curatorial Hub is a physical complement to these virtual spaces, bringing people together for international curatorial exchange and research in New York.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

The Critical Edge of Curating: Friday, November 4, 2011, 2–7 pm

 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
5th Ave at 89th St
New York City

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is pleased to announce The Critical Edge of Curating, a daylong international symposium organized in conjunction with the exhibition Maurizio Cattelan: All on view from November 4, 2011–January 22, 2012.

Curators and artists from around the world discuss critical issues in their practice today, examining the possible impact of exhibitions and related curatorial activities on cultural and social change. Key questions will be addressed as points of departure for a broader theoretical and practical analysis of the field, through conversation amongst colleagues from various institutions and alternative spaces, as well as those working independently.

Speakers include: Ute Meta Bauer (MIT); Shelley Bernstein (Brooklyn Museum); Suzanne Cotter (Abu Dhabi Project, Guggenheim Museum); Tom Eccles (Center for Curatorial Studies); Tom Finkelpearl (Queens Museum of Art); Eungie Joo (New Museum); Weng Choy Lee (School of the Art Institute of Chicago); Chus Martinez (Documenta 13); Rodrigo Moura (Inhotim); Hans Ulrich Obrist (Serpentine Gallery); Yasmil Raymond (Dia Art Foundation); Ralph Rugoff (Hayward Gallery); Christine Tohme (Ashkal Alwan); Anton Vidokle (e-flux); and more.

Co-organized by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and curator of Maurizio Cattelan: All, and Kate Fowle, Executive Director, Independent Curators International (ICI).

Discussion topics include:

End Results 
For many curators and artists working today, the exhibition no longer serves as the culminating manifestation of their work. For some, it is merely one step along a trajectory of research and planning. For others it has become an entirely dispensable model. This discussion will focus on alternative modes of curatorial activity and the expanded notion of what constitutes an exhibition.

Authorship and Agency
As the relationship between artist and curator increasingly blurs, the notion of authorship comes to the fore. This discussion will address the question of curatorial agency in an expanded field of production, by looking at the shifting distinctions between facilitation and the creative process. It will also examine the role of the audience in determining content for a time newly dominated by social media.

Site-Specificity
In a world of global cultural flows, does the art-historical notion of site-specificity (as it developed in the post-Minimalist practices of the 1960s and '70s) still resonate, or is it now just a nostalgic attachment to place? This discussion will focus on different modes of "specificity" in use today, including art created in relation to social and political contexts, as well as art adapted to museum architecture, and art situated in an expanded public realm.

Curating as Activism; the Social Responsibility of the Museum
The intersection of global cultural activity (including the building of new museums and emerging biennial models) with the political realities encountered around the world today, raises issues of social responsibility. This discussion will ask whether curatorial practice can have meaningful social or political impact, as well as what the responsibility of the curator and the museum should be to address and/or ameliorate injustice. It will also examine whether art itself can be a transformative force.

Transnational Currents
With the recent emergence of transnationality as an intellectual framework to rethink the concept of globalization and regional-specific studies, the question arises in both the academy and museum, whether the term applies to actual art production or whether it is merely a discursive model for interpretation. This discussion will ask what it means to curate a transnational exhibition in a world of shifting geo-political, cultural, and social realities.

The program is followed by a reception that includes a viewing of Maurizio Cattelan:

Program is subject to change.

The Leadership Committee for Maurizio Cattelan: All is gratefully acknowledged.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

A Collection For The Incurably Curious





 Henry Wellcome was a man of many parts: entrepreneur, philanthropist, patron of science and pioneer of aerial photography. He also created one of the world's great museums: a vast stockpile of evidence about our universal interest in health and the body.

More than 150 years after his birth in 1853, this exhibition reunites a cross-section of extraordinary objects from his collection, ranging from diagnostic dolls to Japanese sex aids, and from Napoleon's toothbrush to George III's hair. It also provides a very different perspective on some of our own obsessions with medicine and health.

In 'Medicine Man' some objects are gathered by type and others by broad cross-cultural themes. Seven other objects are presented individually and are examined by a variety of commentators from different backgrounds, to show that one object can mean many different things and tell many different stories ... Henry has shared some of his musings, and his Wunderkammer, with us no matter where we live

 

Friday, October 14, 2011

The RUBBINGzone


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The RUBBINGzone [was] (is?) an international social network that is a point of encounter and contrast for anyone who has practiced, practices and will practice RUBBINGthings – there're links there to put thisZONE in context ... click her to enter theZONE

Thursday, October 13, 2011

An Appreciation: Miroslav Tichy – A hero!!

I first came upon Miroslav Tichy [November 20, 1926 – April 12, 2011] back about 2007 and now he has taken off. I didn't know that he had died but I can remember that Paris Vogue tried to get him for a shoot! There are lots of pictures on google ... click here.

I have all 3 books on him if needed. The subject matter was nearly always the same which of course really impressed the French. He probably would have got about 5-10 years in our free country but in his eastern block Stalinist state he was regarded as oddity and all they ever did was put him away from sight during Mayday celebrations in later years.
I cant remember but he may have suffered badly in the late 40's. I do like his work, and I also like his use of matting and biro! He had a darkroom (also primitive) and I believe he survived on donations of old gear chemicals and film.

a lasting impression




LOOKING AT LANDSCAPES ... CONGRATULATIONS

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SHIRL'S 1st: 11 random sentences

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CONGRATULATIONS!
You are published now

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

A MUSEOLOGIST'S DREAM NOW HERE

This program will frighten some of the horses as it alerts us to a promise of more, more and more work for museologists and more and more understanding for museum visitors, be it online or in the halls of knowledge and the place of the muse. WATCH OUT this could all be coming to a phone shop near you sooner than you imagine! ... CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE

The Guest : Andrew Hudson-Smith
Director : Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis
University College London
http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/people/person.asp?id=7

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Is your brain hungry?

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MUSEUMS AND THE PLACE OF THE MUSE: Stories and Cultural Tensions

A paper that aims to tease out some of the tensions to be found in contemporary museums and current museum practice. It discusses and touches upon:
  • Introducing the Wundekammer & Kunstkammer to the 21st C & the World Wide Web
  • Identifying museums’ Communities of Ownership & Interest – their Cognitive Owners 
  • The question of whose stories they hold and who might have the authority to access and tell them
  • How museums might build ‘Social Capital’ in their communities and ways they might develop meaningful and ongoing interfaces with their audiences
  • Museums as ‘Ideas Factories’ in a 21st C context
  • The issue of authenticity, purity and truths relevant to 'cognitive ownership' in a 21st C context

In Memoriam

A silent thought, a hidden tear, keeps his memory

Does anyone remember the AVAGOgallery?

The name AVAGO was apparently created, as far as anyone seems to remember, by Michael C. McMillen and James Doolin – but maybe not. The story goes that the AVAGOgallery is a part 'contemporary art's' pre-history in Sydney.  It spawned look-alike installation spaces, and arts programs, in various locations throughout Australia and apparently elsewhere.

There was an AVAGOgallery at CAMELEON GALLERY in the old Blundstone Boot Factory in Hobart in the 1980s.

Apparently, the AVAGOgallery started life in a shopfront space with a small window on the street. Artists took turns in creating installation pieces for the window. There needs to a bit of research done here to discover who actually had the first AVAGOgallery when and where - and where the idea went.

The name AVAGO is Strine Australian for "have a go (at it)." It seems that it all may have started  out as a teaser piece at the front of a gallery to lure curious passers-by into a gallery and  the main event.

Then there are memories of these little AVAGOgalleries turning up as niches in the facades of galleries, apparently 'Contemporary Art Spaces' in the main. The story goes that these little AVAGOgalleries were of a consistent size and format – 500 x 500 x 500 mm lite with a 40 Wat incandescent bulb.


But also,  it seems that the ubiquitous 'shop window', especial the windows of <DEADshops>,  operated as a kind of AVAGOgallery during community arts and cultural development programs and initiatives – the RENEW NEWCASTLE initiative and there are memories of something of the like in Sydney in the late 70s or early 80s and there was something of the like in Melbourne.

The AVAGOgallery in 'Contemporary Art Spaces' that where generally publicly funded in Australia apparently curated various artists into these spaces. They were certainl not a part of the mainstream <ARTmarket>! It seems that these installations had a distinct tinge of the underground, and the almost transgressive, about them. By comparison with community arts cum community cultural development they claimed something more of the 'cutting edge'  and 'the underground' than their <CLAYTONScousins> in mainstream 'community arts'.

Well that was the 80s yet in the 21stC there is quite probably some <CYBERspace> going begging for an AVAGOgallery:21C online and perhaps this time round with a neo-neoFLUXUS cum neo-neoDaDa flavour. The opportunities are boundless. ALL contributions to the <IDEASpot> are welcomed .... click on this image

If you have a contribution to make OR you have some history to tell ... eMAIL US NOW

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LINKS

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

CITIZENcuration: research in action

21st Century Style Citizen Curatorship ... its like typhoid, a catching idea

What is Citizen Curatorship all about? Is it real? Does it matter? Does anyone care? ... click here to go to our links

Usually, the goal is to set up a  ‘dialogue’ – simple really. Citizen Curators want to say what nobody’s saying; or what other curators are too scared to say; or unable to say; or lack the wit or wisdom to say; or cannot make the time to say; or just do not have the energy to say. Get the picture?

They talk about what no one will admit to talking about – you know, the realistic side of culture and cultural production.

Among Citizen Curators there is  a slew of today’s top movers and shakers in the research world who know a lot stuff not to mention about what life is really like.

Click here to go to our Citizen Curatorship page with links and eventually notes on some of the moving and shaking in the Citizen Curatorial Zone. Have you thought about being a curator? That is someone who cares about something and cares enough to say something ... do something!


ABOUT MUSEUM SHOPS

This image wasn't stolen ... it was collected
Oh well, the museum and gallery gift shops can be amazing places and it sometimes is the case that they are

As they say, many a museum visitor has dropped a penny or two in these lands of books, postcards and other pretty or curious things. Museum and art gallery shops are an opportunity to take a piece of the museum, or the museum experience, or even a piece of the museum/gallery, home with you. However, they can also be battlegrounds of bad behavior. 

Here’s 11rules for minding your manners and getting the most out of a museum and gallery shop visit and purchases.
  1. Museum/gallery shop workers are there to serve you. They busy people and they are not your servants – it’s a rather fine line!
  2. Be aware, and beware, there are other people in the shop and shopping like you. This means that its uncool to just stop in the middle of it. This also means that there is bound to be a tall person around to help you reach something on a high shelf - museum/gallery shoppers are tall and knowledgeable about all kinds of interesting things, so maybe you should ask them something.
  3. There is no such thing as a stupid question –  however, it’s usually a very very good idea to think a little before you ask one.
  4. Try really really  hard to put things back where you found them - just like your mother tried to teach you to do.
  5. If you really loved something in the museum, and there’s not a reproduction of it in the shop, don’t throw a HISSYfit. Just quietly let the gift shop attendants know – you never know they might be able to help you and pass your message on to someone who can arrange for it to be there or even to send something to you ... you never know.
  6. Museum/gallery shop employees are veritable fountains of knowledge – don’t hesitate to test them out, most will enjoy the challenge. 
  7. Don’t haggle over the pricethis place is not a BAGHDADbazaar and it’s not like the GST, artist royalties, etc, were either negotiable, pulled from the air or made up on the spot.
  8. Mention that you are a member, or inquire if you are eligible for a discount, well before the transaction is processed – it saves everyone time, unwelcomed annoyance, and sometimes a lot of embarrassment.
  9. No museum anywhere on the entire planet has a catalogue of its entireCOLLECTIONif they did, you wouldn’t be able to get the dam thing  in your luggage or handbag. Try asking about what books or items come closest to what you’re looking for – you may discover something really interesting or even something surprisingly new.
  10. Museum/gallery shop workers generally know who knows what about whom and sometimes interesting things about other museums in the area/world – ask them politely and they may be able to help.
  11. Museum/gallery shop workers generally know who suggestions can be made to – ask them for an email address and send your suggestions to that person when you get home ... it'll be better advice by then.
Any rules you think we missed?
Let us know in the comments or eMAIL art@7250.net

watch this space

WELCOME ABOARD MUSERS

While you are waiting for more to happen here use the comment section below to express your interest in being a part of the QVmag's network – OR indeed the network of auxiliary musers across Tasmania

Remember, we are looking for people between 11 & UPWARDS who are interested helping the QVmag – and other museums in Tasmania –  meet your needs and expectations. There is much to be done!







AUXILIARY MEMBERSHIP IS FREE

museums need an auxilary's help as much as they need more money

KEY WORDS: Queen Victoria WELCOME ABOARD MUSERSMuseum Art Gallery