“Exhibiting Aboriginal Art” 17 - 19 February 2011
Filmforum - Cinema in the Museum Ludwig
Heinrich-Böll-Platz
50667 Cologne

Symposium on the occasion of the exhibition
"Remembering Forward: Australian Aboriginal Painting since 1960"
20 November 2010 - 20 March 2011

Museum Ludwig, Cologne

The symposium will be held in English. It is free and public; please register with Emily Joyce Evans at evansmuseum-ludwig.de or +49 (0)221 221 24182.

The symposium is supported by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung and the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig e.V.

The starting point of the symposium "Exhibiting Aboriginal Art" is the cultural irritation that occurs when contemporary art, especially painting, by Australian Aboriginal artists is shown in a European art museum. This irritation stems from a fundamental tension between the works and the location of exhibition: their ostensible affinity to works of Western abstract painting on one side, and on the other, the cultural difference that is apparent even in the ‘white cube' of the art museum. Their presentation is thus equally marked by nearness and distance, accessibility (along the lines of abstraction, for example) and strangeness (through their cultural foreignness). Exhibitions of contemporary Aboriginal art thus present both art historical and curatorial challenges. The symposium will explore these challenges though historical and systematic approaches, seeking answers in a dialogue that is interdisciplinary as well as international.

Organized by the Museum Ludwig in cooperation with the Institute of Art History of the University of Basel.

Prof. Kasper König, PD Dr. Claus Volkenandt, Emily Joyce Evans, M.A., Falk Wolf, M.A.

Program

Thursday, 17 February 2011, 7pm

Keynote address

Howard Morphy (Director, Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University): Moving the body painting into the art gallery: a critical perspective from the recent history of Yolngu art

Friday, 18 February 2011, 9am

Kasper König (Director, Museum Ludwig, Cologne): Greeting

Claus Volkenandt (Institute of Art History, University of Basel): Introduction

(1) General frameworks: between art and culture, between depiction and expression

9:15am - 12:45pm

(Moderated by Claus Volkenandt)

Fred Myers (Silver Professor of Anthropology, New York University): Showing too much, showing too little: the art and agency of Aboriginal acrylic painting in circulation

Alexandra Karentzos (Centre for Postcolonial and Gender Studies and Art History, University of Trier): Exclusions from the art institutions: postcolonial remarks

Coffee break (30 minutes)

Wilfried van Damme (Institute for Cul­tural Disciplines, Leiden University): Not what you expect: the nineteenth-century scholarly reception of Aboriginal art in Europe

Response: Larissa Foerster (IK Morphomata, University of Cologne)

(2) Museum presentations as places for aesthetic experience and political reflection

2:15 - 5:30pm

(Moderated by Falk Wolf)

Sally Butler (Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Queensland): Curating Before Time Today, Reinventing tradition in Aurukun Aboriginal art

Friederike Krishnabhakdi-Vasilakis (University of Wollongong): Sharing the space with Kandinsky: bringing Aboriginal art out of the glass cabinet, onto white walls

Coffee break (30 minutes)

Jean-Hubert Martin (freelance curator, Paris): Evolution and politics in Aboriginal art

Response: Kasper König

Saturday, 19 February 2011

(3) The art historical conflict: modern without Modernism?

9:00am - 12:30pm

(Moderated by Emily Joyce Evans)

Margo Neale (Principal Advisor to the Director and Senior Curator [Indigenous], National Museum of Australia): The impossible modernist: the genius of Emily Kame Kngwarreye

Terry Smith (Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory, University of Pittsburgh): Indigenous abstraction: the contemporaneity of Aboriginal art

Coffee break (30 minutes)

Georges Petitjean (Curator, Museum of contemporary Aboriginal art, Utrecht): Nomads in art´

Response: Anne-Marie Bonnet (Department of Art History, University of Bonn)

(4) Turning back to Australia: recognition through art?

2:00 - 4:30pm

(Moderated by Claus Volkenandt)

Franchesca Cubillo (Senior Curator, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art, National Gallery of Australia): The Art of Aboriginal Australia

Chrischona Schmidt (PhD candidate, Australian National University): Emily Kame Kngwarreye's legacy and its influence on the Utopia art movement

Coffee break (30 minutes)

Response: Christian Kaufmann (Honorary Research Associate, Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich)

5 - 5:30pm

Ian McLean (Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts, University of Western Australia, Perth): Closing remarks

The symposium is preceded by a workshop:

"Australian Aboriginal art - materialisation and transformations of knowledge" with Fred Myers and Howard Morphy
17 February 2011, 10am - 4pm (with lunch break)

Venue:
Internationales Kolleg Morphomata / Center for Advanced Studies
University of Cologne
Weyertal 59
50937 Cologne

The workshop is public; please register with Larissa Foerster: larissa.foersteruni-koeln.de.

More information at www.ik-morphomata.uni-koeln.de/
Preparatory tour through the exhibition "Remembering Forward" in the Museum Ludwig on Wednesday, 16 February, 3pm.