Conference: The Politics & Poetics of Exhibiting
- DateThursday 23. February
- TimeKl. 09:00 - 17:00
- PlaceThe Concert Hall
- PriceDKK 250-600
Aarhus University and Louisiana welcome you to a two-day exchange (23 & 24 February 2023) of research, dialogue, and debate. The conference 'The Politics and Poetics of Exhibiting: Proposing New Institutional Models Through Exhibitions' seeks to explore and discuss the role and possibilities of exhibition practices in a museum landscape, where understandings of the art museum as a public institution are rapidly changing. Keynote speakers include Nora Sternfeld, Yvette Mutumba, James Voorhies, and Kirsten Astrup & Maria Bordorff.
In recent years, international public movements such as #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, decolonization actions and global climate protests has put the art museum as a public institution under increased scrutiny, a critical attention which calls for introspection. A concrete, recent example that the museal (self-)understanding is changing can for example be observed in the approval of a new museum definition at the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in August 2022, which departs from the previous definition in fundamental ways, stressing the importance of diversity, sustainability, and an ethically informed museum practice.
Since the 1960s art museums have increasingly been met with critique of the schism between their self-image as public, democratic institutions and the gendered, classed, and colonial power structures that have also permeated these institutions. However, it is relatively new that art museums themselves have started to use their cultural authority to challenge and renegotiate their own hegemonic structures. Here, the exhibition functions as one of the central arenas where the critique and discussion of the art museum as a public institution takes place.
One of the central focus points of the conference under the headline The Politics and Poetics of Exhibiting: Proposing New Institutional Models Through Exhibitions is the role of exhibitions in transforming or revising the institution from within: Is it enough to exhibit critique or must the criticism also result in changed infrastructures and museum practices? If the museum’s collection is what distinguishes the art museum from other cultural institutions such as galleries, biennales, exhibition centers and so on, how can the “permanence” of museums and their collections be put in dialogue with the “urgency” of contemporary political and social issues? How do exhibitions respond to shifts in museal self-understandings, and are new approaches to exhibition-making relevant?
The conference seeks to explore the role and relevance of exhibitions as concrete, spatial arguments that lend themselves to deliberating new ideas about how the art museum could work as a public institution today.
8 meme posters
In response to the conference, the artist Cem A. has created eight fictional exhibition posters, Theory is My Friend, that temporarily replace existing posters in the Louisiana Café. Cem A. is known for running the meme account @freeze_magazine on Instagram, which explores topics such as survival and alienation in the art world through a humorous and ironic lens. With these 8 posters, the artist has adapted internet memes to the Louisiana’s visual aesthetic. Through this approach, the posters become a site-specific intervention that reflects on the role of memes both as a form of art and institutional critique.
PROGRAMME
THURSDAY 23 FEBRUARY
09.00–09.30
Registration and coffee
09.30–10.00
Welcome
Poul Erik Tøjner
Director, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark
Introduction
Pernille Lystlund Matzen
PhD fellow, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk / Aarhus University, Denmark
SESSION 1: MUSEUMS AS CONTACT / CONFLICT ZONES
10.00–11.15
Keynote: Museums as Spectral Infrastructures
Nora Sternfeld
Professor, HFBK, University of Fine Arts, Hamburg, Germany
Chair: Julie Lejsgaard Christensen
Classical archaeologist, curator and PhD fellow at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark
11.15–12.15
Exhibition Case Studies: Working with Exhibitions of Colonial History in Art Museums
- Curating in the Grey Zone: Negotiating the Heritage of Paul Gauguin
Anna Kærsgaard Gregersen
Curator, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark - A Museum of Guilt and Shame? Introducing Colonial Histories in the Art Museum
Dorthe Aagesen
Chief curator and senior researcher at SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen - Call Me by My Name! An Exhibition About Identity and Diversity
Mohamed Abdi
Educator, debater and independent writer, Oslo, Norway
Lars Toft-Eriksen
Head of programming, MUNCH, Oslo, Norway
Chair: Johanne Løgstrup
Curator, educator and writer, Copenhagen, Denmark
12.15–13.15
Lunch in the Boat House
SESSION 2: EMERGENT INSTITUTIONAL MODELS
13.15–14.30
Roundtable Discussion: Emergent Institutional Models
- Awa Konaté
Founder and curator, Culture Art Society (CAS), Copenhagen, Denmark - Ida Bencke & Dea Antonsen
Founders and curators, Laboratory of Aesthetics and Ecology, Copenhagen, Denmark - Emily Fahlén
Founder and curator, Mint, Stockholm, Sweden
Chair: Trine Friis Sørensen
Postdoc fellow at Kunsthal Aarhus and Aarhus University, Denmark
14.30–15.00
Coffee and cake
15.00–16.00
Keynote: #MuseumsAreNotNeutral
Yvette Mutumba
Managing director, Contemporary And (C&), and curator-at-large, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands
Chair: Anna Vestergaard Jørgensen
Postdoc fellow at SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, and Aarhus University, Denmark
FRIDAY 24 FEBRUARY
09.30–10.00
Registration and coffee
SESSION 3: THE EXHIBITION AS MEDIUM AND CRITICAL FORM
10.00–11.15
Keynote: Postsensualism: Changing Aesthetics of the Curatorial
James Voorhies
Curator of The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, USA
Chair: Jacob Lund
Associate professor of aesthetics and culture at Aarhus University, Denmark
11.15–12.30 Presentations and Session Conversation
- Apparatuses of Autonomy: Notes on Democratization and the Art Exhibition in the Age of Reproduction
Kim West
Critic, researcher and editor, based in Stockholm, Sweden - After Institutions
Karen Archey
Curator of contemporary art, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands - Being Persons in a World of Objects
Lucia Pietroiusti
Curator and strategic advisor for ecology, Serpentine Galleries, London, UK
Chair: Jacob Lund
Associate professor of aesthetics and culture at Aarhus University, Denmark
12.30–13.30
Lunch in the Boat House
13.30–14.00
Situating Memes in Physical Contexts
Cem A (@freeze_magazine)
Artist
SESSION 4: A CHANGING MUSEUM LANDSCAPE
14.00–14.45
Museum Directors Roundtable Discussion: A Changing Museum Landscape
- Frances Morris
Director, Tate Modern, London, UK - Zdenka Badovinac
Director, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb (MSU), Croatia - Ann Demeester
Director, Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland - Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath
Directors, Hamburger Bahnhof, National Gallery of Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany
Chair: Louise Steiwer
Art critic and curator
14.45–15.15
Coffee and cake
15.15–16.15
Keynote: Art Museums and Public Service
Astrup & Bordorff
Artist duo, Copenhagen, Denmark
Chair: Anna Vestergaard Jørgensen
Postdoc fellow at SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, and Aarhus University, Denmark
16.15–16.30
Closing remarks
16.30–17.30
Guided tour of Louisiana
Yvette Mutumba (DE)
Co-founder and artistic and managing director of Contemporary And (C&), a global platform comprising several projects and publications including C& Magazine. She is also curator-at-large at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands, and a lecturer at the Institute of Art in Context at the University of Arts, Berlin, Germany. She was previously part of the curatorial team of the 10th Berlin Biennale (2018), and curator at the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2012–2016). She holds a PhD from Birkbeck, University of London, UK, and together with Julia Grosse (DE), she was awarded the internationally renowned European Cultural Manager of the Year in 2020.
Kirsten Astrup (DK) & Maria Bordorff (DK)
Work in the field of film, music, theatre and performance and have often dealt with the Danish welfare society in their film cabarets. They have had solo shows at SMK, National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen; MUNCH, Oslo, Norway; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, Denmark, among other institutions. This spring at Revolver Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, they present a new play about the Nordic care crisis and climate change.
Nora Sternfeld (DE)
Curator and professor of art education at the HFBK, University of Fine Arts, Hamburg, Germany. She was previously documenta professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel, Germany (2018–2022). Before that, she was professor of curating and mediating art at Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland (2012–2018). She is currently co-director of the master’s programme for exhibition theory and practice: educating/curating/managing (/ecm), University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria. She is also in the core team of the network schnittpunkt. ausstellungstheorie & praxis, Vienna, Austria. She is co-founder of trafo.K, an office for art, education and critical knowledge production, Vienna, Austria, and she is a member of the research platform freethought. She publishes on contemporary art, educational theory, exhibitions, politics of history and anti-racism.
James Voorhies (US)
Curator and historian of modern and contemporary art who applies a holistic approach to curating – something akin to seeing both the exhibition and the art institution as compositions. He is curator of The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, USA, where he is responsible for working with the collection and contemporary artists to curate exhibitions and commissioned projects that strengthen the museum’s engagement with audiences in the region and internationally. Voorhies has published several books including Postsensual Aesthetics: On the Logic of the Curatorial (2023) and Beyond Objecthood: The Exhibition as a Critical Form since 1968 (2017). He is based in Miami and New York City and holds a PhD in modern and contemporary art history from the Ohio State University, USA.
Organizers:
Pernille Lystlund Matzen, PhD fellow, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art / Aarhus University
Mathias Ussing Seeberg, Curator and Head of research, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
The conference is generously supported by the New Carlsberg Foundation.
The conference is part of the current research project Whose ‘Bildung’? Renegotiating modern art museums through exhibition practices. Learn more on the project.