Absence And Difficult Knowledge In Contemporary Art Museums

This book analyzes practices of collecting in European art museums from 1989 to the present, arguing that museums actualize absence both consciously and unconsciously, while misrepresentation is an outcome of the absent perspectives and voices of minority community members which are rarely considered in relation to contemporary art. Difficult knowledge is proposed as a way of dealing with absence productively. Drawing on social art history, museology, postcolonial theory, and memory studies, Margaret Tali analyzes the collections of four modern and contemporary art museums across Europe: the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest, the Kiasma Museum in Helsinki, and the Kumu Museum in Tallinn.

Comprising 45 chapters, written especially for this volume by an international team of leading experts, The Routledge Companion to the Philosophies of Painting and Sculpture is the first handbook of its kind. The editors have organized the chapters across eight broader sections: Artforms History Questions of form, style, and address Art and science Comparisons among the arts Questions of value Philosophers of art Institutional questions Individual topics include art and cognitive science, evolutionary origins of art, art and perception, pictorial realism, artistic taste, style, issues of race and gender, art and religion, art and philosophy, and the end of art. The work of selected philosophers is also discussed, including Diderot, Hegel, Ruskin, Gombrich, Goodman, Wollheim, and Danto. With an introduction from the editors and comprehensively indexed, The Routledge Companion to the Philosophies of Painting and Sculpture serves as a point of entry to the subject for a broad range of students as well as an up-to-date reference for scholars in the field.

Museums and Centers of Contemporary Art in Central Europe is a comprehensive study of the ecosystem of art museums and centers in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Focusing on institutions founded after 1989, the book analyses a thirty-year boom in art exhibition space in these regions, as well as a range of socio-political influences and curatorial debates that had a significant impact upon their development. Tracing the inspiration for the increase in art institutions and the models upon which these new spaces were based, Jagodzińska offers a unique insight into the history of museums in Central Europe. Providing analysis of a range of issues, including private and public patronage, architecture, and changing visions of national museums of art, the book situates these newly-founded institutions within their historical, political and museological contexts. Considering whether - and in what ways - they can be said to have a shared regional identity that is distinct from institutions elsewhere, this valuable contribution paints a picture of the region in its entirety from the perspective of new institutions of art. Offering the first comprehensive study on the topic, Museums and Centers of Contemporary Art in Central Europe should be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of museums, art, history and architecture.

In this highly original study, Vanessa Russ examines the gradual invention of Aboriginal art within the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This process occurred as the social histories of Australia expanded and recognised Aboriginal people, through wars and political shifts, and as international organisations began placing pressure on nation states to expand, diversify, and respect multicultural perspectives. This book explores a state art institution as a case study to consider these complex narratives through a single history of Aboriginal art from early colonisation until today. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, museum studies, and Indigenous studies.

Contemporary Curating, Artistic Reference and Public Reception undertakes a unique critical survey and analysis of prevailing group exhibition-making practices in Europe, the UK and North America. Drawing on curatorial literature and two in-depth case studies of group exhibitions, Bertrand advocates for a mode of curatorial practice that secures the content of artworks, in contrast to prevailing open-ended, indeterminate approaches. Proposing a third exhibition type beyond the current binary exhibition ontology that opposes art historical narratives to curatorial installations or Gesamtkunstwerk, the book directly tackles the enduring critique of curating as a mediating activity that produces sameness in group-exhibition contexts by establishing artistic equivalences. The book relies on the principles of analytical philosophy to assess how different exhibition-making approaches fix reference and determine artistic reception, reintroducing a standard to evaluate exhibitions beyond personal taste and thematic coherence. Bertrand ultimately proposes an alternative conception of practice that affirms the renewed relevance of the institutional group show in the present context. Contemporary Curating, Artistic Reference and Public Reception will be of interest to academics, researchers and students working in museum and curatorial studies, visual cultures, art theory and art history programmes. Art theorists and critics, as well as curators of contemporary art with a research-based practice, should also find much to interest them within the pages of the book.

Since the late nineteenth century, art museums have played crucial social, political, and economic roles throughout Latin America because of the ways that they structure representation. By means of their architecture, collections, exhibitions, and curatorial practices, Latin American art museums have crafted representations of communities, including nation states, and promoted particular group ideologies. This collection of essays, arranged in thematic sections, will examine the varying and complex functions of art museums in Latin America: as nation-building institutions and instruments of state cultural politics; as foci for the promotion of Latin American modernities and modernisms; as sites of mediation between local and international, private and public interests; as organizations that negotiate cultural construction within the Latin American diaspora and shape constructs of Latin America and its nations; and as venues for the contestation of elitist and Eurocentric notions of culture and the realization of cultural diversity rooted in multiethnic environments.

This volume focuses on political and social expressions in contemporary art of Ukraine, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia. It explores the transformations that art in Ukraine and the Baltic states has undergone since their independence in 1991, discussing how the conflicts and challenges of the last three decades have impacted the reconsideration of identity and fostered resistance of culture against economic and political crises. It analyzes connections between the past and the present as seen by the artists in these countries and looks at their visions of the future. Contemporary Ukrainian art portrays various perspectives, addressing issues from controversial historical topics to the present military conflict in the East of the country. Baltic art speaks out against the erasure of past historical traumas and analyzes the pertinence of its cultural scene to the European community. The contributions in this collection open a discussion of whether there is a single paradigm that describes the contemporary processes of art production in Ukraine and the Baltic countries. With contributions by Ieva Astahovska, Svitlana Biedarieva, Kateryna Botanova, Olena Martynyuk, Vytautas Michelkevičius, Lina Michelkevičė, Margaret Tali, and Jessica Zychowicz.

This monograph uses the national pavilions of the Venice Biennale as a vehicle to examine the development of international contemporary art trends within the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Japan and Korea and 16 additional national entities who have had less continuous participation in this global art event. Analysing both the spatial and visual representation of contemporary art presented at the Venice Biennale and incorporating the politics behind national selections, this monograph provides insights into a range of important elements of the global art industry. Areas analysed include national cultural trends and strategies, the inversion of the peripheral to the centre stage of the Biennale, geopolitics in gaining exhibition space at the Venice Biennale, curatorial practices for contemporary art presentation and artistic trends that seek to deal with major economic, cultural, religious and environmental issues emerging from non-European art centres. This monograph will be of interest to scholars in art history, museum studies and Asia-Pacific cultural history.