[1] “The museum is me!” Early Women Curators and the Making of Institutional Collections (1880s-1960s)

Dr Laia Anguix-Vilches, Radboud University, laia.anguixvilchesru.nl

Between the 1880s-1960s, women started accessing decision-making roles in museums across Europe. This panel proposes a transnational exploration of both the contributions and the challenges of pioneering female curators regarding exhibition design, collection-making, and museum practice. As scholarship (Diaz-Andreu, 2005; Hill, 2016) starts unearthing the distinctiveness of women’s curatorial choices, we aim to define and explore the extent of this potential gendered approach to collecting and curating. Would institutional collections and exhibitions have been shaped anyhow differently, had more women been in charge during their history?

Beyond describing obstacles to women’s agency in arts curation (such as “marriage bars”, salary gaps, and prejudices against female leadership), this panel aims to analyse the collective impact of female management in the shaping of museums and galleries. In that respect, we welcome papers reflecting on women’s institutional collecting patterns, as well as on the public reception of their curatorial practices. What did female curators collect, exhibit and research about? What were their networking strategies with the art market, art criticism and academic scholarship? Also, to what extent did gender-related restrictions influence and shape the collections of women-led museums? What workarounds have women employed to successfully carry out their curatorial duties?

Engaging with the conference’s themes of marginalised histories and diversification of the field, we address excluded narratives in the shaping of institutional collections, on the grounds that an increased understanding of the 20th-century gender-biased development of the curatorial profession may ultimately shine a historical light into the current, persisting ‘glass ceiling’ in the museum sector.

Please provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper, together with your name and institutional affiliation (if any) to the session convenor: Dr Laia Anguix-Vilches, Radboud University, laia.anguixvilchesru.nl.

Deadline for submissions: 10 November 2023

---

[2] Para-zomias: Prefigurative Urban Transformations in Asia

Jason Waite, Justus Liebig University, jasonhwaitegmail.com
Minji Chun, University of Oxford, minji.chunst-hughs.ox.ac.uk

The word “zomia,” common across language groups in areas of Myanmar, Bangladesh, and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, means “remote peoples” or “hill people.” The political and social dimensions of zomia were explored by anthropologist James C. Scott who describes the area as a riotous heterogeneity of Indigenous people, refugees, and others evading colonisation and exploitation.

Thinking zomia as a concept through urban space, this session looks at “para-zomia” as a composite of fissures with cities in Asia where heterogeneous communities are self-organising diverse economic and social meshes to support artistic production and prefigure different modes of individual and collective life. In what ways are artists and cultural workers remaking urban space to create nourishing ecologies that support each other as well as other marginalised groups? With cities in Asia in the midst of transformation, how are artistic and collective practices establishing experimental communities in the lacunae of these cities to support daily reproduction, creative production, and prefigurative, anti-capitalist ways of living and working together?

This session delves into how different artists, collectives, and cultural workers are self-organising their own present and futures within Asian cities, as evidenced in the practices of the cultural collective Amateur Riot in the Koenji neighbourhood of Tokyo or the artist collective Listen to the City in the Euljiro area of Seoul. In essence, the art historical potential of this session resides in its ability to uncover a rich tapestry of visual narratives that reflect the ever-evolving relationship between culture, space, and resistance in Asia.

To offer a paper:
Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor(s).
You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any). Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media and in the digital programme. You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.

Deadline for submissions: 10 November 2023