The Global Rise of Traveling Exhibitions at Mid-Century

Traveling exhibitions gained momentum in the mid-20th century as a new, efficient mode of disseminating art and knowledge. The importance of traveling shows was confirmed by the 1953 UNESCO’s Manual of Traveling Exhibitions, a document tasked with diffusing professional guidelines that solidified traveling exhibitions as a new technology of mass communication. Its author, Elodi Courter Osborne, served as the Director of MoMA’s Department of Circulating Exhibitions (1939 to 1947) establishing standards that later became popularized by the more well-known International Program. However, the genealogy of circulating exhibitions goes back to the Soviet agit-prop trains of the October Revolution that had been designed to carry a very different type of ideological content. Both the Soviet model from the 1920s and the US-American model developed in the following decades subsequently contributed to the use of traveling exhibitions throughout the globe.

This panel aims to examine global histories of traveling exhibitions with their institutional backing, curatorial motivations, and social repercussions; to question the politics of traveling shows and inquire into the mode of spectatorship they created. We welcome interdisciplinary papers that combine art history with social anthropology, political studies, etc. And particularly those that reach beyond the West European - North American axis.

If interested, please send the title and abstract of your paper (max 250-words) to dr. Magdalena Moskalewicz and dr. Agata Pietrasik at: mmoskalewiczsaic.edu AND a.pietrasikwp.pl by May 6, 2021. Include your CAA member ID. We are open to virtual presentations, as the panel will likely take the online, or part-online, form. We will notify the authors of selected papers by May 10 and the final acceptance of the panel by CAA will be confirmed in August. (You need to be a current CAA member to apply to the conference. If your membership lapsed, you will need to renew your membership as soon as you receive our notification.)

Further information about the CAA 2022 conference can be found here: https://www.collegeart.org/programs/conference/proposals