Author: Dana

Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present

| Dana

“The book derives its title from the Jenks Museum, a defunct natural history museum at Brown University. Woven throughout are vignettes about the museum’s founding curator, the naturalist John Whipple Potter Jenks, the institution’s colorful past, and a recent project—led by Lubar, artist Mark Dion, and a group of students—to recreate the museum as an art and history exhibit. These stories provide a narrative wedge into the history and philosophy of museums.

Objects are central to the book, which begins by considering the complex act of collecting. What do curators collect and why? What might be useful for research or exhibition? What is worth saving, and who decides? “Objects,” Lubar writes, “are important to museums, but they need to be the right objects, collected thoughtfully, documented thoroughly—and not too many.”

~Valerie Thompson

 

Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present
Steven Lubar
Harvard University Press
2017
416 pp.

 

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2017/08/14/a-behind-the-scenes-museum-tour-offers-insight-into-the-once-and-future-roles-of-these-iconic-institutions/

An Open Letter in Support of Dana Shutz

| Dana

“The National Academy letter is a direct response to a six-page outline sent to Eva Respini, the curator of the ICA show, by a group of protestors. (Megan Smith, Allison Disher, Stephanie Houten, Pampi, and Vonds DuBuisson are the authors of that letter, which appeared online last week in the form of a Google Doc.) “We were hoping to hear the ICA resist the narrative that Black people can be sacrificed for the greater good,” the artists wrote, referring to the controversy that erupted over a Schutz painting at the Whitney Biennial earlier this year.”

National Academy Members Pen Open Letter in Support of Dana Schutz

Nursing Mom Makes the Breast of It After Museum Tells Her to Cover Up

| Dana

“The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has apologized to a breastfeeding visitor who says she was told to cover up.

The woman, who posts on Twitter as @vaguechera, says she had “flashed a nanosecond of nipple” in the museum’s courtyard when she was told to conceal her breasts. Instead of bearing that in silence, she busted out her phone and started tweeting.

She ribbed the V&A, pointing out that the museum seemed totally fine with some bare bosoms — as long as they were made of stone instead of flesh.

A pulpit for Pisa Cathedral by Italian sculptor Giovanni Pisano, showing a woman breastfeeding, was on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in October 2016. This weekend, a breastfeeding museum visitor says she was told to cover up, which the museum says violates its own policies.
Waring Abbott/Getty Images

http://www.npr.org/2017/08/06/541912663/nursing-mom-makes-the-breast-of-it-after-museum-tells-her-to-cover-up?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20170806

The Role that Museums Play in Social Activism

| Dana

“Should museums be seen as a place of dialogue for social change? Is it their responsibility to do so?

Recently, articles have come out addressing this topic—for example, MuseumNext conducted a survey asking “Should museums be activists?” Among the responses, data showed that “younger audiences respond very positively to the idea of museums taking a stand.”

Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice exhibition at the High Museum of Art.

The choice of museums to take a stand is unique to each institution, and it’s complicated, layered, and specific to the geographical location and political climate of the region. In the meantime, artists will continue to create works that question our existence and boundaries; be responsive to the emotional, social, political, and religious world around them; and ask the important questions that move us all forward as aware global citizens. Museums and cultural institutions that support contemporary artists will continue to support them, whether through curatorial or educational programming. Supporting artists will also mean empowering youth voices through museum settings and allowing young artists to continue to push boundaries, respond to the world around them in an empathetic and critical way, and ask important questions for the rest of us to listen.”

http://blog.americansforthearts.org/2017/08/02/the-role-museums-play-in-social-activism

Cindy Sherman Unlocks Her Instagram

| Dana

“But the photographer Cindy Sherman — who knows more than most about the deceptions of selfies — has quietly been exploring Instagram’s potential for something more than self-promotion. She created a private account on the service last October while in Tokyo; last week, without warning, she unlocked her account and changed her handle to @_cindysherman . (She originally went by @misterfriedas_mom, in honor of her pet macaw.) At a stroke, she revealed not only quotidian ’grams of sunsets and lunches, but also more than three dozen distorted selfies, deformed by unnatural smudges, copious flares and kaleidoscopic reflections.

I can’t say why she decided to make public the nearly 600 photographs on her account, but I’ll call it an act of generosity from an artist who is less outgoing than most Instagram hounds. Her new mobile selfies are by turns outlandish, hilarious and poignant. They demystify the influences and experiments of a great artist, even as they also point to the gap between Ms. Sherman’s vital, unsettling practice of sideways self-portraiture and the narcissistic practice of selfie snapping.”

How Are Museums Changing?

| Dana

How are museums changing from institutions of the elite to places that ‘promote humanity?’

 

Sarah Sims, of the Missouri History Museum, and Nicole Ivy, of the American Alliance of Museums discussed how museums are changing to reflect diversity and inclusion on Thursday’s St. Louis on the Air.
KELLY MOFFITT | ST. LOUIS PUBLIC RADIO

http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/how-are-museums-changing-institutions-elite-places-promote-humanity#stream/0

 

Activating Diversity and Inclusion: A Blueprint

| Dana

ACTIVATING DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION: A BLUEPRINT FOR MUSEUM EDUCATORS AS ALLIES AND CHANGEMAKERS

JME-Reader-Guide-42.2.pdf

“In this article, the authors Wendy Ng, Syrus Marcus Ware, and Alyssa Greenberg provide a blueprint for a rigorous approach to how museum educators can activate diversity and inclusion to create social change. The authors critically analyze the problematic power dynamics that maintain white supremacy in museum work, and introduce guiding principles of allyship and practical reflection strategies for enacting equitable relationships with visitors and staff across lines of social difference. This guide is designed to help you develop a critical practice that is conscious and constant, and engage in anti-oppressive museum work internally and externally.”

 

http://www.museumedu.org/reader/activating-diversity-inclusion-blueprint-museum-educators-allies-changemakers/

 

 

Akron Art Museum Discovers Relevance Takes More Than A New Building

| Dana

“What we learned is that we created a pretty fantastic infrastructure with this new expansion, and I think we captured a lot of people’s imagination about the Akron Art Museum and its architecture, and definitely pointed people toward our collection at the museum,” says Akron Art Museum Executive Director and CEO Mark Masuoka.

“But what we forgot to do was continue this conversation about who we are, what the value of this museum is to this community,” he says. “We took for granted that if we built this museum, people would just come and they would just keep coming. Well, they came because they were curious, but at some point they stopped coming, and it became a concern for the museum that we have to continue to make the case for people to (keep coming) as we go forward.”

Akron Art Museum discovers relevance takes more than a new building