NEGOTIATING THE TRANSCULTURAL MUSEUM: NEW PERSPECTIVES

In recent times, the understanding of the museum has fundamentally changed. Instead of being conceived as a container of artworks as objects to collect and care for, the museum is today considered a place for shared and continuous cultural production.

The daily production of museums coalesces the participation of many stakeholders: Not only museum employees and artists participate in its developments, but also visitors, journalists, fellow art historians and curators from other museums and, especially, artists living locally take part in this process.

This new understanding of the museum raises questions about the collective and cooperative character of exhibiting and exhibition making. It also interrogates arts museums and institutions about the ways in which locally-relevant cultural productions ought to be managed in relation to the worldwide, transcultural field of the arts.

The dialectics between local and global for many years has been developed in the framing of Western art. Now, with the contribution of African, South-American or Asian art, we are confronted with a diverse type of art history, a different type of ‘social embeddedness’ of the arts. Therefore, when we talk about the relation between the local and global in a transcultural context, we have to take into account that different paradigms are confronted and interrelated. What can be the adequate institutional frame to negotiate these different social definitions of artistic practice?

We invite PhD candidates and scholars in their early careers to contribute a 20-minute presentation on these issues, and to answer related questions, such as:

How is the work of the people in situ influenced by global discourse?
How can the local work be productive for local producers, mirror their ideas and habits, and nonetheless be relevant for an international discourse?
How does an international career, defined by residencies and exhibitions across continents, transform curatorial attitudes?
What role does ‘western education’ have in a transcultural world?

The symposium is part of a larger conference titled ‘Negotiating the Transcultural Museum’ (Bolzano, 11-12 April 2019), which is organised by the Faculty of Design & Art of the Free University of Bolzano (Dean Prof. Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen) and Museion - Museo d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bolzano (director Letizia Ragaglia) on the occasion of the forthcoming change in the directorship of Museion. Selected speakers will also be invited to join the final roundtable of this conference. Confirmed conference speakers are Christine Eyene, Carol Yinghua Lu, Catherine David, Elvira Fyangani Ose, Karla Jasso, Christian Kravagna, Emanuele Guidi and Elisabetta Rattalino.

To apply, please submit an abstract (max. 250 words) and a short biography (max. 150 words) by 10 March to elisabetta.rattalinounibz.it. Selected speakers will be notified by 16 March.

The selected speakers will be awarded a scholarship of 300€ to support their participation in the symposium.