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From: Natasha Adamou <adamou.natashagmail.com>
Date: Jun 22, 2015
Subject: CFP: The Return of History: Reconstructing art exhibitions in the 21st century

The Return of History: Reconstructing art exhibitions in the 21st century

Convenors:
Natasha Adamou, British School at Rome - Henry Moore Foundation; University of Essex, adamou.natashagmail.com
Michaela Giebelhausen, UAL Central Saint Martins, m.giebelhausencsm.arts.ac.uk
Michael Tymkiw, University of Essex, mtymkiwessex.ac.uk

At the turn of the 21st century, a broad range of art institutions have revisited paradigmatic exhibitions from previous decades. A few recent examples include When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013 (Fondazione Prada, 2013); The Family of Man, 1955 (Clervaux Castle, 2013); Richard Hamilton's Growth and Form, 1949/1951 (Tate Modern, 2014); and Other Primary Structures (Jewish Museum, 2014). The motivations behind these and other reconstructions are diverse, ranging from an interest in critically examining the legacy of seminal exhibitions to an attempt to promote alternative histories ‘from a global point of view’ (as Other Primary Structures sought to do). Nevertheless, the growing interest in reconstructing exhibitions ultimately seems to signal a ‘self-reflexive’ turn in exhibition-making, one in which revisiting historical exhibitions becomes a form of ‘protest against forgetting’, as Hans Ulrich Obrist has recently suggested by drawing on an idea from historian Eric Hobsbawm.

This session invites proposals for papers that probe the art-historical, theoretical, and political implications of restaging paradigmatic exhibitions. Potential approaches include (but are not limited to) examining particular case studies, such as individual exhibitions or institutions; addressing theoretical issues that cut across different historical moments or geographies; or considering how the reconstruction of historically significant exhibitions engages with larger debates about the role of museums in rewriting their own histories, in renegotiating national identity and cultural memory, in advancing new perspectives in postcolonial theory, and in mediating politics.

Email paper proposals to the session convenor(s) by 9 November 2015.
Paper Proposal Guidelines are available to download here:
http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2016/session34