[1] Museum Exhibitions and the Political Economy of Exchange.
From: Matilde Cartolari.
Date: Oct 6, 2024.

Temporary exhibitions shared between museums are labour-, capital-, and time-intensive undertakings, and employ increasingly specialised actors, techniques, and infrastructures. They are used to strengthen international diplomacy and generate revenue for museums and their locales. Museum studies has long been concerned with permanent collections, while the exhibition industry—a core part of museum programming—remains undertheorized. Yet a serious structural analysis of how circulating exhibitions are produced can illuminate conditions beyond the museum that determine object im/mobility, the geopolitics of loans, and the power relations that govern shared practices.
This session invites proposals for 15-minute papers that grapple with the political economy of museum exhibitions, from the nineteenth century to the present. How has international legislation shaped norms for temporarily importing objects (e.g., barriers to entry for new art forms, government indemnity schemes, responses to the climate crisis)? How has free trade or protectionist policies (e.g. multilateral agreements such as NAFTA, EU, or BRICS) impacted object movement? How have geopolitical tensions or reconfigurations of national policies (e.g., the Brexit vote, armed conflict) contoured the design of exhibitions?
What objects circulate through these policies, which actors (beyond curators) determine object itineraries, and which audiences gain or lose access? We are particularly interested in proposals that go beyond the discussion of single exhibitions to draw out relationships between the international norms of museum exhibition-making and external policy, scrutinising the economy of the leisure industry, revealing the asymmetries of global circulation circuits, and challenging established narratives of centre and periphery.

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 15-minute paper, your name and institutional affiliation (if any).

Matilde Cartolari, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität / Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich. m.cartolarizikg.eu / Nushelle de Silva, Fordham University, USA. nushellefordham.edu.

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[2] Women artists associations and their activities: 1920-1970.
From: Glafki Gotsi.
Date: Oct 9, 2024.

Women artists’ unified actions have a rich history in the 19th and 20th centuries. Research has already revealed many of its aspects. Nevertheless, new material, questions and narratives are expected to further develop the field. This session aims to explore women artists associations and their activities (e.g. exhibitions, conferences, speeches, publications, networking etc.) throughout the world in the interwar period and in the decades immediately after World War II.
Women’s collective initiatives in the art scene of the 1950s and 1960s remain little known and require additional attention and historical framing. Although this may not be the case for the interwar period, which has attracted more scholarly interest (see, for instance, Deepwell, Birnbaum, Artls Bulletin 8:1) one question that remains to be explored is the extent to which the groups of this period and their goals can be linked to those after WW II. Moreover, the exploration of issues such as the impact that contemporary feminist concerns had on women artists’ collective organization, as well as the relation of the latter to the cultural, political and economic climate between and after the wars, is hoped to shed more light to women’s art movements on both national and transnational level. Finally, another crucial subject in the context of women’s history involves the examination of possible analogies or discrepancies between women artists associations of the years 1920-1970 and the feminist collectives that emerged within the feminist movement of the 1970s.

We want to encourage 20 minute papers that deal with any of the above topics. Speakers from various parts of the world are welcome to present their work, discuss different case studies and share their views. If interested, please send a title and abstract (250 words maximum), with your name and institutional affiliation (if any) to the session convenors:

Glafki Gotsi, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, cgkotsihist.auth.gr / Una Richmond, Independent Art Historian, unawiac.org.uk.