Call for Papers: 'Exhibit A: Authorship on Display'

Organized by: Chelsea Haines, Grant Johnson and Natalie Musteata
April 7, 2014

In the last two decades, the study of exhibition history has grown exponentially: a recent surge of publications, conferences, courses, and reconstructions of historical exhibitions has fostered a new body of knowledge. However, discussions on exhibition history are conspicuously bifurcated, shuttling between a small coterie of curators on the one hand, and a select number of scholars on the other. In curatorial circles, discourse often focuses on individual practices, with little sustained reflection on their broader historical and museological implications. Meanwhile, in academic circles, the history of exhibitions is often situated in terms of spectatorship, without directing attention to the various forms of authorship involved in exhibition making. This conference seeks to sketch a typology of authorial roles in contemporary exhibition practice by assembling a range of perspectives—artists, curators, art historians, and emerging scholars—for a day-long conversation.

All relevant papers will be considered. Possible subjects may include:

- the retrospective or solo show
- the exhibition as genre, medium or apparatus
- exhibition design and rhetoric of display
- artist-curated exhibitions
-'the curatorial turn' in art making

- relationships between exhibition authors (artists, curators, collectors, et. al.)

Interested participants are invited to submit a paper no longer than 3,000 words along with a CV to nmusteatagmail.com by Friday, January 10, 2014.

This conference is organized with the support of the Department of Art History and the Center for the Humanities, The Graduate Center, CUNY.