Memory stones/ Stolpersteine, Jewish and Roma Heritage in Europe

The German artist Gunter Demnig began his Stolperstein project in the mid-1990s as a guerrilla art installation in Berlin. It has grown enormously, and now it is arguably the world’s largest participatory counter-memorial. Stolpersteine -‘stumbling stones’ – are 10 cm x 10 cm brass plates affixed to cobblestones, bearing the names and dates of birth, deportation, and murder or survival of victims of Nazi Germany; they are installed in the pavement/sidewalk in front of the ‘last residence of choice’ of the person(s) being commemorated. There are now over 70,000 Stolpersteine located in 24 countries. The installations are organized through a combination of individual, state sponsored and grass roots efforts.

The scholars Ruth Mandel and Rachel Lehr are carrying out multi-sited ethnographic research about this and other site-specific artists’ responses to the Holocaust. They describe here what they are finding, starting in Norway where the traveled 5,000 km with Demnig, observing and even taking part in installation ceremonies. Mandel and Lehr attended many installations–not only in Norway, but Austria, Hungary, and Germany (we hope to attend many more). At all these, people treated the stones with great reverence. The improvised installation rituals we observed took many forms—religious, secular, simple, elaborate; but all seemed to share a sense of the sacred—even if momentary. Flowers, candles, stones, and photos of the deceased, were arranged around the Stolpersteine, and were well-documented. This was a striking contrast with the local landscape directly following an installation. Afterward, the stone simply became a small glint interrupting the grey stones surrounding it, offering passers-by a chance to stumble across it, bend down, read, and reflect—or to pass on by.

Some of the questions of the two researchers are:

For example, why are there so few stones in Poland—despite the artist’s offer to donate and install them gratis?  Why have some municipalities  banned their installation? Why do some Jewish leaders opposed them? Do they pose threats? How do different generations of descendants respond? How do local people interact with them?
These are some of the questions that will be guiding the next stages of our ongoing research

There are two things I find really inspiring about this project. First that it allows small gestures and material presences of memorisation to weave into the social fabric of contemporary Europe. Second, that it prompts contemporary stories about Europeans reactions to these acts of memorialisation. Some of them are really disturbing - you would not imagine people still having something 'against' the victims...

Please read more:

https://jewish-heritage-europe.eu/have-your-say/kaddish-in-norway/

In Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary, there is a lot of potential into 'planting' these stones into the pavement of cities and villages, for the many victims...
The artist, in his website says that the victims were: Jews, Sinti, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, mentally and/or physically disabled people, those persecuted for their political views, their sexual orientation, forced laborers, people persecuted on the grounds that they were ‘asocial’ such as homeless people or prostitutes—anyone who was persecuted or murdered by the Nazi regime between 1933 and 1945.

Cambridge conference on the future of ethnographic museums

The SWICH conference derives from a project co-funded by the European Council: Exhibiting Culture, Exhibiting Empire, Exhibiting Europe.

Looking at the list of speakers,  one could see some of the 10 institutional partners: museums in Oxford (Pitt Rivers), Berlin, Leiden, Hamburg, Wellington (Te Papa Museum), Stockholm, Dublin, Rome, Marseille, Lubliana. Really curious about the outputs of this event.

This image from a shop in London (2008) represents my contribution to the topic. The future of ethnographic museums is to be found outside the ethnographic museums!

SWICH Summative Conference
EXHIBITING CULTURE, EXHIBITING EMPIRE, EXHIBITING EUROPE

King’s College, University of Cambridge

Wednesday 11 – Friday 13 July 2018

Programme
DAY 1: WEDNESDAY 11 JULY

15:30 – 16:30 KEYNOTE 1:

 Sharon MacDonald,

 Alexander von Humboldt Professor, Institut für Europäische
Ethnologie,

 Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

 Respondent: Claudia Augustat
16:30 – 18:00 PANEL 1: _NEW DIRECTIONS_

 Chair: Guido Gryseels, RMCA, Tervuren

 Panelist 1: Christian Schicklgruber, Weltmuseum, Vienna

 Panelist 2: Barbara Plankensteiner, Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg

 Panelist 3: Laura van Broekhoeven, Director, Pitt Rivers Museum
18:00 – 19:30 EVENING RECEPTION AT MAA

 Welcome from Nicholas Thomas

DAY 2: THURSDAY 12 JULY

09:30 – 10:30 KEYNOTE 2:

 Arapata Hakiwai

 Kaihautū (Māori Co-leader), Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

 Respondent:

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee
11:00 – 12:30 PANEL 2: _PUBLICS AND THEIR ENGAGEMENTS_

 Chair: Malavika Anderson (Wellcome Trust, London)

 Panelist 1: Rosa Anna Di Lella (Museo delle Civiltà, Rome)

 Panelist 2: Michael Barrett (Värdskulturmuseerna, Stockholm)

12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 14:00 INTERVENTION 1: Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyen

14:00 – 15:30 PANEL 3: _WHAT IT MEANS TO CARE FOR COLLECTIONS_

 Chair: Mark Elliott (MAA, Cambridge)

 Panelist 1: Dean Sully (UCL, London)

 Panelist 2: Michel Lee (Värdskulturmuseerna, Stockholm)

 Panelist 3: Judith Finlay (National Museum of Ireland, Dublin)

15:30 – 16:00 Coffee
16:00 – 16:30 INTERVENTION 2: George Nuku

16:30 – 17:00 Discussion

19:00 – 21:00 Conference Dinner
DAY 3: FRIDAY 13 JULY

09:30 – 10:30 PANEL 4:    GIVING IT BACK?

 Chair:

 Panelist 1: Wayne Modest (Research Center for Material Culture, Leiden)

 Panelist 2: Nicholas Thomas (MAA, Cambridge)

 Panelist 3: Ulrich Menter (Linden Museum, Stuttgart)

10:30 – 11:00 Coffee
11:00 – 12:30 PANEL 5:     _SWICH FUTURES_

 Chair:

 Panelist 1: Salvador Garcia Arnillas (Museu de Cultures del Mon,
Barcelona)

 Panelist 2: Bojana Rogel Skafar (Slovenia Etno-Museum, Ljubljana)

 Panelist 3: Sandra Ferracuti (Lindenmuseum, Stuttgart)

 Panelist 4: Veerle Taekels (Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren)

 Panelist 5: Mikael Mohammed (Musée des civilisations de l’Europe et
de la

 Méditerranée, Marseille)
12:30-13:00 CLOSING REMARKS: WHERE NEXT?

 Michael Cooke (Arts Council England)

 Henrietta Lidchi (Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen, Leiden)

 Benoît de L’Estoile (CNRS, France)

13:00-14:00 Lunch

Liar's Poker: Representations of Politics, Politics of Representation by Brian Holmes

Liar\'s Poker
		Representation of Politics/Politics of Representation
		Brian Holmes
		Basically, what I have to say here is simple: when people talk about politics in an artistic frame, they\'re lying. Indeed, the lies they tell are often painfully obvious, and worse is the moment when you realize that some will go forever unchallenged and take on, not the semblance of truth, but the reliability of convention. In a period like ours when the relationship to politics is one of the legitimating arguments for the very existence of public art, the tissue of lies that surrounds one when entering a museum can become so dense that it\'s like falling into an ancient cellar full of spider webs, and choking on them as you struggle to breathe. Now, the mere mention of this reality will make even my friends and allies in the artistic establishment rather nervous; but it is a reality nonetheless. And like most of the political realities in our democratic age, it has directly to do with the question of representation. Picture Politics Does anyone doubt there exists a politics of representation? Such people have clearly not looked at the television during a political campaign. But worse, they have not looked at social movements. They have not witnessed the endless capacity of people who do not occupy positions of elite power, and who do not enjoy direct access to major media, to project their messages nonetheless, by means of signs, images and gestures. Nor have they realized how effectively artists can work in such »outside« contexts: one need only think of Gran Fury, amidst the New York Aids activism of the eighties; of Ne Pas Plier, with the jobless people\'s movements in Paris in the nineties; or of the many artists who have participated in recent counter-globalization demonstrations and campaigns. Artists can play a vital role in this kind of »picture politics«. At the same time, it is easy for artists to heed the injunction of the museum, the magazines and the market, which say: »Picture politics for me.« Do a picture or a sculpture of politics, carry out the representation of political conflict, as in the installation piece by Thomas Hirschhorn, Wirtschaftslandschaft Davos, shown at Kunsthaus Zürich when Hirschhorn won the prize for »Young Swiss Art« in 2001. This work uses model houses, toy soldiers, real barbed wire and other ready-made materials to represent the besieged Swiss valley where the world\'s most powerful people annually meet. Hirschhorn\'s style can be referenced to »dadaist collage«, observes one critic; but his major source is »the practice of excluded people who know perfectly well how to get their messages across, by using whatever they find.« [1] In this case the excluded people are those who confront the barbed wire at the World Economic Forum. And since counter-globalization has been a hot subject, representing them is a perfect way to become popular in a museum. Hirschhorn goes further, though, because he turns a bit of ordinary life into a representation of politics, with his Bataille Monument in a Turkish quarter of Kassel. This life-sized library, snack bar and makeshift TV studio is a participatory project, whose effects in the neighborhood itself I won\'t presume to judge from a distance. What concerns me is the way he manages its relations to the artistic frame. On the »taxi stand« where visitors awaited to be ferried from the Documenta 11 to the site of the monument, Hirschhorn placed a quotation from the American artist, David Hammonds: »The art audience is the worst audience in the world. It\'s overly educated, it\'s conservative, it\'s out to criticize, not to understand and it never has any fun... So I refuse to deal with that audience, and I\'ll play with the street audience. That audience is much more human, and their opinion is from the heart. They don\'t have any reason to play games, there\'s nothing gained or lost.« Hirschhorn claims to have abandoned the framing structures of contemporary art, for a more authentically engaged social practice. But if that\'s the case, why the taxi, why the exposure of the site to visitors\' eyes, which turns the social project into a representation? What kind of game is he playing? In his case there are certainly things to be won - like the prize for Young Swiss Art, or the Marcel Duchamp prize for the promotion of French artists, awarded to Hirschhorn by the ADIAF association in the year 2000. The Duchamp prize is sponsored by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, a transnational consulting company, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Kunsthaus Zürich, where Wirtschaftslandschaft Davos was shown, is regularly funded by the Private Banking subsidiary of Crédit Suisse, which ranks 31st on Fortune\'s Global 500 list. Documenta 11 was sponsored by Volkswagen, Deutsche Telekom and Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe. Does all this sound familiar? In the contemporary art game, the picture of excluded people\'s politics is worth a lot to the included - including transnational corporations. Of course I\'m aware that the prize commissions are independent, just like exhibition curators. Their independence supports the notion of an autonomous artistic sphere, separate from the economic nexus that sustains it. These kinds of separations, between abstract financial decisions and their substantive effects, are exactly what the protestors at the Davos meetings refuse. Hirschhorn retains an interest in the artistic frame he claims to leave behind. Yet he seems particularly uncomfortable there; and it\'s intriguing to see how he ups the symbolic stakes in the Davos piece, formulating a direct critique of transnational capitalism even as he is pursued and courted by the corporate-backed prize commissions. How does picture politics work, when it is associated with a proper name and presented within the contemplative frame of the art institution? Invariably it produces statements like these: »I represent the people«, or »I represent a social movement«, or »I represent the excluded« - which are the classic lies of representative democracy, when it serves to conceal private interests. [2] Of course, this root fact makes myself, a self-styled »critic« writing in catalogues and magazines about the relations of art and politics, into one of the baldest liars of them all. And for some perverse reason I want to tell you how it\'s done. Rules of the Game Liar\'s poker is easy to play. The deck is composed of kings and aces. One person draws, and names the card in his hand; the other judges if he\'s telling the truth. If you draw an ace, it\'s easy: you have no choice but to say it\'s an ace. If you draw a king, then the game begins: because you can always bluff. Each time you claim to hold an ace, the other player must look in your eyes and decide if it\'s real. If he thinks it\'s not, he calls your bluff; and if he\'s right he wins a dollar, or ten, or a hundred, depending on how high you\'ve set the stakes. If he\'s wrong, you win the same. And if he doesn\'t do a thing, he loses fifty cents, or five bucks, or fifty dollars, and the card goes back into the pack, so that no one ever knows if you were telling the truth. For our purposes, the artist draws the cards, and the public calls the bluffs. Nowadays, of course, the artist often plays as a team with the curator or the critic; so those relations are never entirely certain. As for the cards, the ace is political reality, and its image in the museum is highly attractive. This gives the artist a great advantage: because to prove an ace is a bluff, you have to go out looking, whereas the public prefers to stay inside the museum. The artist, however, also has a great disadvantage, which is that the house - I mean the people who run the game, the founders, the funders, the boards and directors - actually can\'t stand aces, and if they think the artist really has one, they will never let him or her set foot inside the museum. So in both cases the artist has to bluff his way through, either claiming political engagement to live like a king inside the white cube, or hiding it to siphon off money, resources and publicity for use by a social movement. Occasionally, when the lie is too grotesque, the public will call the bluff; and then the artist has to give up some cultural capital. Even more rarely, it turns out that the artist is really involved in a social movement, in which case he or she is soon fated to disappear from the museum. Now there\'s an obvious question: Why would anyone want to play such a game? In fact the question can be asked about anyone playing by the unbearable rules that hold in almost every social field today. These are the rules of inequality, exploitation, domination - those nasty realities we have to lie about in polite democratic society. # For the entire article please follow the link: Retrieved from: http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1276&lang=en on 20th of June 2017

A personal list of contemporary researchers doing and writing about exhibition making

B
Paul Basu

https://www.soas.ac.uk/staff/staff104140.php
Exhibition Experiments

Horia Bernea and Irina Nicolau
http://destinatii.liternet.ro/articol/12/Irina-Nicolau/Dosar-sentimental-fragmente.html

Philippe Bourgeois
http://philippebourgois.net/

C
David Crowley
https://www.rca.ac.uk/more/staff/professor-david-crowley/

Craig Campbell
http://ethnographicterminalia.org/the-collective

G
Jean Gabus - performance, journalism and exhibition making

H
Jacques Hainard
https://vimeo.com/128450743

I
Inge Daniels
http://ingedaniels.com/


Julie Ham
The University of Hong Kong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln6EtShoOU8​

K

Kirshenblatt Gimblett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

M
Sharon Macdonald
https://www.euroethno.hu-berlin.de/de/institut/personen/macdonald

N
Irina Nicolau and Horia Bernea
http://destinatii.liternet.ro/articol/12/Irina-Nicolau/Dosar-sentimental-fragmente.html

Gabriela Nicolescu
http://gabrielanicolescu.com/

S
Alexandra Schussler
Villa Sovietica
http://www.uva.nl/en/profile/s/c/a.schussler/a.schussler.html

T
Emma Tarlo
http://hairhumanstories.co.uk/

W
Kevin Walker, Royal College of Art

https://www.rca.ac.uk/more/staff/dr-kevin-walker/

Textile Fragments

I think it is always fascinating to think that museums have fragments of things, and not entire things. Like for example, in the Museum of the Romanian Peasant there is an entire store full of textile fragments, called MOSTRE. The display in the museum and artists such as Lena Constante took the idea of fragments and patchwork and made extremely powerful pieces of art.
This idea made me think of a conference on textile fragments, their use and display (in museums) held at the University of Wolverhampton in 2014.


http://www.wlv.ac.uk/research/research-institutes-and-centres/centre-for-historical-research/centre-for-the-history-of-retailing-and-distribut/conferences-workshops--past-events/workshop--textile-fragments-incomplete-textiles/
But also, of the idea that sometimes clothes themselves contain fragments, and that the most useful form of textile fragment is the patch, especially the patches on the clothes of the poor. The following image comes from the Book cover of Vivienne's Richmond's book: Clothing the Poor, Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Are textile fragments so different from archives of image and text?
Does the closeness of the body impact in any way the way textiles are valued and displayed?
Can poverty be put on display? Maybe, an interesting way to put it would be through the work of patches...and textile fragments, the quintessence of need, care (love) and work.

How to learn to be a curator

This is a programe in France (Grenoble) to train future curators in the field of arts.
The application deadline: 30th of April.

Please, see for the application pack and procedures:
http://www.ecoledumagasin.com/spip.php?article151


Application

Candidates are expected to have attained a level equivalent to a master’s degree, or to have some years of significant professional experience. They are aware of the production and the mediation of contemporary art within the institutional contexts, and are open to the current landscape of diversifying sites, forms, languages and economies of culture specific to emergences in the field of contemporary art. A sufficient level of cultural knowledge allows the candidate to question the debates on art, from other theoretical fields.

Considering the pedagogy at the École (autonomy of the participants, individual researches, study trips, meetings and seminars), the capacity to work both independently and collaboratively is necessary. The École du Magasin is an international program that welcomes artists, curators and theoreticians from all over the world. The languages of communication in the program are English and French. Candidates are expected to have sufficient knowledge of both languages. An ability to shift between languages is encouraged.

Session expenses are covered by the École. Participants are not required to pay tuition fees, but must assure their own living expenses. Please note that the École being organised independently from the University system, application to grants offered by the Ministry of Education are hardly received. Candidates searching for a financial support should rather apply to funds developed for an international residency by national or international public or private cultural organisations.

Admission to the École du Magasin is approved in two stages :

1. A pre-selection based on an application, which includes :

* Application form

* Current Curriculum Vitae

* Curatorial project proposal

* 1 Letter of motivation

* 3 cover letters

* Copies of Diploma and/or proofs of employment

The curatorial project proposal is of no more than three A4 pages recto/verso, and includes a curatorial statement, a presentation of the location of the project as well as the participating artists, and a realistic budget. The candidates precisely define the object of this project, and articulate its relevance within the field of art. The proposal must clearly convey the concerns and the nature of the project.

NB : The proposal is for admission purposes only and is not intended for consideration during the session.

Application must be sent between 1st February and no later then 30 April 2012. Only complete dossiers will be considered.


2. An interview with a jury in Grenoble. Pre-selected candidates will be informed by letter of the date of the interview (scheduled in June). Interviews via Internet can be arranged on a case-by-case basis.

building peace in the minds of men and women?

se refera la SE Europei
e un workshop - deci se lucreaza.
aduna directori de muzee din mai multe state din SE Europei.
Daca subiectul e SE Europei, intalnirea organizata de UNESCO are loc la Venetia sau Torino, firesc, nu?

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/culture-events/?tx_browser_pi1%5BshowUid%5D=4672&cHash=cfaa382ee6
Si cica vor face o expozitie umblatoare in care vor vorbi despre pace si razboi. Cine vor vorbi? Directorii de muzee!

CONF: The Museum as laboratory, catalist, forum

International Symposium

The "Principle of the Museum"

The Museum as laboratory, catalyst, forum
University of Bonn

February 11-12, 2011


"The museum might indeed become a place of interdisciplinary activity." -

Joseph Beuys (1980)


In times of changing demands, shifting challenges and high expectations

faced by universities and museums, experts will try to take stock of the

current situation in Bonn on 11–12 February 2011. In a comparative approach

between the concepts of "the museum of art" and / vs. "the museum of

cultures", the different actors and disciplines will question their own ways

to analyse and perform theory and practice of collecting and exhibiting.

As suspected by Joseph Beuys, "the museum" is supposed to become a place for

"a permanent conference". Our purpose is to reflect the museum's roles,

functions and practice in a shared self-questioning of all involved agents

and actors, i.e. scholars, managers and consumers. Beyond discussions about

a "boom", "reform" or "crisis of museums", the focus of our symposium is on

the present situation: in particular the collaboration of the art histories

of the museums and of the universities, the histories of culture,

ethnographies and ethnologies as well as museology and museum practice,

which become increasingly alienated from each other, deserve our interest.

The role and functions of the museum and the university, as well as their

manner of interaction, have to be redefined in the current shift of

challenges and expectations. The scientific cartography and the social

determinations / functions of the museum need to be revised, for example in

terms of education, training and "edutainment". While museum studies

experience a boom, in particular within the field of cultural sciences, and

history of art becomes increasingly involved in the history of museums and

collection - in a kind of trendy "museological turn" - the real museum

scene suffers from drastic watersheds and changes.

Museums, modernity, history of art and ethnology evolved both materially and

epistemologically in simultaneous and complex mutual interdependencies.

Museums are eminent "agencies of modernity" reflecting the social status and

the roles of art and sciences of their time. Within the context of the

present revision of traditional paradigms of western thinking and of the

upcoming reorganisation of our cartographies of knowledge, museum displays

and performances can be regarded as a catalyst for a theory of science and

society – and their practice. Challenges, functions and perspectives of

one’s own thinking and actions have to be reconsidered. This specifically

affects the disciplines of history of art and ethnology, since they are

agents of the indigenisation and commercialisation of their objects and

subjects. In Bonn, both protagonists and representatives of production,

distribution and reception of matters of "art and culture" will work

together to draw a current balance and to develop new perspectives.



The symposium will be held in German and English.

It is free and public.



Organized by Prof. Dr. Anne-Marie Bonnet, Prof. Dr. Karoline Noack, Prof.

Dr. Paul Geyer



Contact:

Jana Baumann M.A.

Research Project 'Prinzip Museum'

Department of History of Art, University of Bonn

prinzipmuseum@uni-bonn.de

www.khi.uni-bonn.de

Martzy shore!

sau
Arta la colt de strada

Imaginaţi-vă parterul din Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art NY sau Centre Pompidou plin de mărțișoare la vânzare! Parcă și văd sute de vânzători ambulanți, înghesuiți și înfrigurați, cu măsuțe de lemn, geamantane Duchampiene și alte plase și plăsuțe (cafeluțe, de ce nu), șevalete și pancarde pline de (mici) obiecte aducătoare de plăceri, făcute să încânte și în consecință, să se vândă.

Păi dacă asta nu e artă, atunci ce e?
Introducerea asta am scris-o ca sa vă spun mai voalat că umilul mărțișor de la colțul străzii brusc ar putea fi privit altfel. Să aduci mărțișorul în muzeu este, după părerea mea, echivalent cu a coborî conceptul de artă la ceea ce se fabrică în și pentru stradă. Mi s-ar părea un experiment în artă foarte interesant!

Nu voi intra în povestea şi istoria mărţişorului ca obiect şi tradiţie. (Deşi povestea asta a purtării firului răsucit, a celor două principii alb şi negru sau alb şi roşu, care nu pot face să meargă lumea mai departe unul fără de celălalt... e şi ea e tulburătoare, poetică şi de-a dreptul plină de înţelesuri înalte.) Eu nu despre înalt în artă vreau să scriu, ci despre artefact ca obiect de artă considerat de mulți ca fiind jos, mic, al strazii și plebei și în consecință neimportant. Dar din moment ce se află în toate piețele, la colțuri de stradă și în muzeu, se vede treaba că e cât se poate de important – cel puțin pentru lumea orașului.
Aţi cumpărat mărţişoare anul ăsta? Câte şi pentru cine? Diferite unele de altele? De unde? Iată câteva întrebări la care chiar vreau să vă gândiţi şi să răspundeți, pe cât posibil, chiar pe site-ul ziarului. Vă întreb pentru că arta mărţişorului prezent, dacă mi se permite această observaţie, stă nu numai în confecționare, ci și în selecție. Eu una am mers de curiozitate la Muzeul Țăranului Român unde știu că în fiecare an se face târg de mărțișor. Nu avea de gând să cumpăr nimic. Voiam să văd ce mai numește lumea mărțișor, ce se mai întâmplă în urbe, curiozități din astea feminine... Ei, dar din momentul în care am intrat pe poarta muzeului, mi s-a rupt filmul! Adică, bucurie mai mare ca asta de a mă plimba pe la toate măsuțele și a vedea toate mărțișoarele a celor peste o sută de artiști nu am mai avut de mult în niciun muzeu în care am intrat în ultimii ani. Și nu spun să mergeți acolo să vedeți și voi, pentru că poate voi nu veți vedea nimic. Spun doar că eu am rămas suspendată într-o plăcere și bucurie imensă. O fi și creativitatea mai mare, acum pe timpuri de criză!
Îmi imaginez că plăcerea mea se aseamănă întru câtva cu a celor ce vizitau camerele de curiozități de secol 18, 19... Să vă dau niste exemple? Am văzut și pipăit niște cărticele mici mici, cât o ghindă, făcute din hârtie manuală și legate cu șnur alb-roșu din lână, am văzut broșe pe post de nasturi mari cât o palmă, dungați, pistruiați, bulinați... Am văzut ceainice și broșe ca ceainice făcute din lemn și pictate lila și roz cu flori. Și dacă am pomenit de ceinic poate ar trebui să spun și de dulcețuri și gemuri de fructe făcute la mânăstire. Știți, din acelea legate cu material frumos colorat peste capace...Am văzut linguri de lemn cât un deget de copil și simbolul dragostei, al maternității și alte simboluri transpuse tot în lemn de către un meșter popular(habar nu aveam de așa ceva). Am văzut pinguini cu ochi de nasturi, cercei guguloaie,pietricele, mărgeluțe, zgărdane, răvașe, ghicitori, pănuș de răchită facută cerc și prins cu alamă, macrame în cerculețe, piei în floricele, portofele și gentuțe, șnurulețe, șnurulețe, șnurulețe, broderii, petice și iconițe, cruciulițe... Gata m-am oprit! A, ba nu, asta e super tare: niște broșe consistente care conțineau piese de radio, cipuri, un ceas stricat cu Barbie, o foarfecă și chiar un nasture auriu de la un palton militar de pe vremea RPR. Știți de care?
Ei, bănuiesc că dacă mergea altcineva vedea altceva.
Oricum, când vorbesc despre mărțișor ca obiect de artă nu mă refer doar la plăcerea estetică pe care o provoacă sau nu, ci la această acumulare enormă de bizarerii care atrag un public atât de variat și fascinează într-atât de tare încât să se vândă. Arta mărșișorului cred că constă în momentul de încântare pe care îl produce. Încântare și din partea cumpărătorului cțnd cumpără, dar și a producătorului când îl face. Antropologul Alfred Gell, chiar asta și numește arta: o capcană de încântare! (trap of enchantment) De unde vine încântarea? Păi de la procesul de selecție, zic eu. Mărțișoarele se cumpără pentru a fi dăruite – fiecare câte unei persoane (de obicei de sex feminin, la noi). Și sunt relativ ieftine, ca să poți dărui multe. Cumpărătorul se încântă în momentul în care alege: mărțișorul ăsta cutărei persoane, ăsta, alteia cred că i-ar plăcea. Ce fel de asocieri se pot face în mintea umană? De ce mărțișorul ăsta ca un colac de sfoară i se potrivește mai bine mătușii mele decât mamei? Mamei trebuie să-i iau ceva cu roșu, dar nu mare – ei cam asta îi place. Și nepoțelei mele – mâ gândesc la ea, la hainele pe care le poartă, la cum râde și i se luminează toată fața. Are o geacă albă ...pe ea ar sta bine floricica asta de piele... Trifoiul ăsta vernil țipă a o prietenă de-a mea. Are culoarea și forma care mă fac să mă gândesc la ea. Și tot așa... În momentul alegerii se produc niște legături sensibile. Se apelează la memorii, la observații, se fac asocieri. Cineva îmi spunea că vrea să cumpere două mărțișoare pentru două doamne doctor, mai nonconformiste. O iau de braț și o duc la standul cu animăluțe făcute din plante. Îi arăt un porcușor făcut dintr-o floare uscată cu bot de bob de fasole roșie. Foarte fromoase spune doamna, dar nu pot! Dacă doamna doctor e grasă și se interpretează...
Când pleci de la cumpărăturile de mărțișor parcă te întorci cu tolba plină de asociații. Omul și mărțișorul, puși unul lângă altul... și la mijloc,cel ce dăruiește!
Și să mai spună cineva că la noi nu se cumpără artă- chiar și conceptuală! E pe toate străzile (fiecare cu gustul lui) și uite, că și în muzee.

Conf: Museums and Civil Society

Martin Kippenberger
Museum of Modern Art Syros, 1993-97
Sign: Christopher Wool
Courtesy: Estate Martin Kippenberger

Museums and Civil Society
The Role of Artists, Institutions
and Politics Now!

Symposium

Date: February 12, 2-7p.m.

Location: the New Museum,
Sky Lounge, 235 Bowery,
New York, NY 10002

Within the framework of the exhibition 'The Artist as Troublemaker –
the Museum and Civil Society' at the Austrian Cultural Forum NYC
(December 7th, 2008 – March 28th, 2009), the Kunsthaus Graz / LM
Joanneum organizes in co-operation with the New Museum and the
Austrian Cultural Forum a symposium on scenarios of recent and future
museum practice and theory. Curators, artists and scholars will
discuss urgent and fundamental issues, regarding the functioning of
museums in a world of crisis.

Undoubtedly, we are facing fundamental changes in the art- and museum
world. After a period of unprecedented growth, the new realities,
triggered by immense economic transformations, appear on the horizon.
Art has evolved over the years from modernism's avant-garde to a
highly popular phenomenon in a visual culture that easily absorbs
critical and dissident views within its institutional structure. A
wide range of institutions underwent changes and redefinitions that
matched many of the developments in the media- and art markets. Within
the framework and under the term "museum" we are continuously
witnessing striking developments that oscillate between the
commercialisation and the creation of new, so far unknown public
spaces, as well as the emergence of a whole range of often
contradictory formats, from "sheer entertainment" to "academic
education".

All of this is built upon rather marginally reflected notions of the
various museums' statuses, between the American donor-based "private"
model and the European public situation, driven by "cultural
politics". What options are available for museums in a situation of
drastically changing parameters of institutional realities? How do we
want our institutional practice to look in the next years to come? How
will the museum as a part of civil society act in the near and further
future? What consequences it might have for the artistic practice?

The symposium concentrates on the most urgent issues, generated by
this situation. It investigates the role of "cultural politics" in the
functioning of museums and it collects reflections on various
positions in the US and Europe as well as globally under the auspices
of drastic financial and economic changes. It considers critical
artistic approaches and their presence in the museum perceived as a
location of contradictions. Is the museum still able to go beyond
borders of disciplines and to create connecting platforms for various
fields of knowledge? How can a museum nowadays be perceived as an
educational vehicle versus the general public, the schools,
universities and a professional field? What is the future of the
museum within educational politics? Last but not least, the symposium
investigates the museum's role as a dispositif to create new forms and
qualities of public space. Are there any innovative models able to
generate new definitions and developments of new for ms and dynamics
of the open public space?


2.00-3.15p.m.
Panel I: the artist and his/her critical position towards museum practice

Ann Temkin (curator, MOMA, NYC), Laura Hoptman (curator, the New
Museum, NYC), Elisabeth Fiedler (curator, LM Joanneum, Graz), Martin
Prinzhorn (professor, art critic, Vienna), Michael Clegg (artist,
Berlin).

Moderated by Peter Pakesch (artistic director, Kunsthaus Graz/LM Joanneum)

3.45-5.00p.m.
Panel II: the museum education and the development of the public

Maria Lind (director, CCS, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson NY),
Eugenie Joo (director of education and public programmes, the New
Museum, NYC), Marco de Michelis (professor, Columbia University, NYC),
Dieter Bogner (the New Museum's board member, museum consultant,
Vienna)

Moderated by Katrin Bucher-Trantow (curator Kunsthaus Graz/LM Joanneum

5.30-6.45p.m.
Panel III: the museum's future perspectives

Lisa Phillips (director, the New Museum, NYC), Peter Pakesch (artistic
director, Kunsthaus Graz/LM Joanneum), Donald Preziosi (professor,
UCLA), Claire Farago (professor, University of Colorado Boulder),
Diana Thater (artist, LA)

Moderated by Adam Budak (curator, Kunsthaus Graz/LM Joanneum)


Cooperation:

Kunsthaus Graz / LM Joanneum
The New Museum, NYC
Austrian Cultural Forum NYC

With the support of the departement for culture at the regional
governement of Styria

Museological Review, 'Cultural Property: Ownership, Restitution and Retention and its Impact on Museum Collections, their Care, Display and Interpre

tation

Issue 14

The Museological Review, edited by the PhD students of the Department of Museum Studies based at the University of Leicester, has launched an annual online journal. It is a forum for students and practitioners to share and debate innovative perspectives on museums and publishes original research in the field of museum studies and allied subject areas such as cultural studies, archaeology, conservation science, architecture, art history and social sciences, from a range of multi-disciplinary perspectives. We are seeking contributors from the international research community, to share experimental and creative ideas to cultivate debate and enhance museum practice. We actively encourage new thinking with the aim that the Museological Review will share experimental research and creative ideas within a constructive environment.
This issue will focus on the ownership, restitution and retention of cultural property and it's impact on museum collections; which includes related issues of care and conservation, display, exhibition, interpretation and visitor reception, as well as cultural diversity, representation and exclusion.

We invite abstracts, of no more than 300 words in length, for papers in English that explore these issues. The Museological Review is targeted towards PhD students from all over the world, but we would also welcome contributions from other researchers and professionals.

Please send an abstract of your proposed paper – along with a 100-word biography describing your current area of research or position of employment - by email to the Editors (cj36@leicester.ac.uk), or by post to the address given below, by February 1st, 2009. Please remember to include your email address and/or contact details as well as details of your institutional affiliation, if applicable. Successful contributors will be notified by email before March 1st, 2009 and final papers are due September 30th, 2009. All abstracts submitted will be subject to a rigorous selection process to maintain academic quality. We regret that we will be unable to accept all abstracts submitted.
The Editors, Museological ReviewDepartment of Museum StudiesUniversity of Leicester105, Princess Road EastLEICESTER, UKLE1 7LGE-mail:

La ce bun o expozitie?

De pe H-Museum... o conferinta la care mi-ar fi placut sa pot merge. E organizata de Max Planck Research Network History of Scientific Objects si Deutsches Museum. Are loc la Munchen, 27/28 November, 2008
Organizatorii sunt Helmuth Trischler, Christian Sichau, Susanne
Pickert; Deutsches Museum.

Sa vedem ce spun ei:  No exhibition without scholarship: Object based studies and the exploration of the cultural context of the object are prerequisites for the intelligible
showing. However, exhibitions do more than merely visualize the results of
research. They have the potential of stimulating scholarship and generating
knowledge by posing new research questions.
How can researchers take advantage of this opportunity? In which way can
scholarly arguments be translated into spatial arrangement and at the same
time kept serviceable for reading and citing by later recipients? What might
the results of the scholarly examination of an exhibition look like?
Unlike for printed texts, the traditional publication media of scholarship,
common standards of terminology and argumentation for exhibitions have yet
to emerge. What exactly is the role of the objects on display? Recent
history of science and technology has intensively interrogated the epistemic
quality of these material sources of research.
Yet how do the objects unfold their properties in being staged for
exhibition purposes?The conference will bring together exhibition makers, museum experts, designers, artists, experts in cultural studies and historians of science and technology to engage in a discussion about their experiences and expectations regarding the exhibition as product and generator of scholarship.

Conference talks will be given in English. If you would like to attend,

please send a short e-mail to Susanne Pickert,  s.pickert@deutsches-museum.de

(Selectez cateva titluri de prezentari din program):

I: What is this thing called exhibition? Reflections on object, text and space:Helmuth Trischler, Christian Sichau, Susanne Pickert(Munich) 

Ulrich Raulff (Marbach)

Old answers, new questions: What do exhibitions really produce?

Jochen Brüning (Berlin)

Exhibitions vs. publications. On scientific achievements and their

evaluation

Martha Fleming (Copenhagen/London)

Thinking through objects

II: Stories on display. What and how do we see in exhibitions?

Uwe W. Brückner (Stuttgart): Scenography – opera as model for integrative design

Stefan Iglhaut (Berlin):Story telling and scenography: Strategies of science communication in

exhibitions

III: History of science, objects, exhibitions: Interrelations, transitions,

transformations

Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (Berlin)

Making visible. Visualization in the sciences – and in exhibitions?

Ulrich Großmann (Nuremberg)

The Challenge of Objects - CIHA Congress 2012. The object in the focus of

arthistorical studies

Thomas Söderqvist (Copenhagen)

Do things talk?

IV: More than history of science?! Exhibitions, research, and the public

Volker Mosbrugger (Frankfurt/M.)

Natural history research and exhibitions – a hermeneutical cycle

Robert Bud (London)

Power, belief and trust: a context for scholarly priorities in the history

of science

Ad Maas (Leiden)

Tearing down the altar. A new view of displaying scientific instruments in

Museum Boerhaave

V: Making exhibitions: Concepts, constraints, critiques

Jürgen Renn (Berlin)

Exhibitions as history of science in action

Walter Hauser (Munich)

Artefacts, visuals and topography as evidence: Working on an exhibition on

nano- and biotechnology

Thomas Schnalke (Berlin)

Arguing with objects. The exhibition as a scientific format of publication

Academic tourism sau cine participă la conferinţe şi de ce

Fiindcă tocmai m-am întors de la o conferinţă pe teme muzeologice în Suedia la Norrkoping pe tema Comparing National Museums http://www.namu.se/ m-am gândit să povestesc în câteva rânduri la ce mi-a folosit.
Printre cei care lucrează în şi cu muzee în România nu foarte multă lume se înghesuie pe la conferinţe. Nu ştiu de ce. Poate pentru că cele la care au fost în ţară au părut plicticoase, poate pentru că de altele, e greu să auzi...

Deocamdată, părerea mea e că are şi Academic Tourism-ul rostul lui din motivele pe care le voi înşirui după cum urmează:
1. mai afli cine ce face (îţi dai mai bine seama unde te afli cu cercetarea, intuiţiile, ambiţiile profesioanele, cum ar veni iei o gură foarte puternică de REALITATE)
2.întâlneşti oameni, stabileşti contacte, pui la cale noi proiecte sau prietenii
3. îţi vin idei (chiar şi din prelegeri cat se poate de plicticoase. Observaţie: cele mai bune şi interesante răspunsuri le auzi plecând de la cele mai proaste întrebări)
4. înţelegi mai bine ce vrei tu să spui-să scrii (confruntat cu o alteritate, se şlefuiesc mai bine gândurile)
5. înveţi să prezinţi un subiect în faţa multor oameni
6. vezi noi oraşe, ţări
7. călătoreşti şi mănânci de cele mai multe ori gratis mâncăruri pe care nu ţi le găteşti singur în bucătărie
8. ai mai mult timp să fii cu tine
9. te întorci bucuros acasă, la viaţa fără de conferinţe
Despre părţile proaste ale aceluiaşi mers la conferinţe scriu altă dată.

Joia lui Jean la MŢR

Din joi în joi, Muzeul Ţăranului Român organizează întâlniri cu muzeografii şi cercetătorii săi. Joia asta, Şerban Anghelescu ne-a vorbit de călătoriile şi mirările lui Dinicu Golescu, insistând pe experienţele muzeale, în Europa începutului de secol XIX, ale boierului român.

Am aflat cum cabinetele de curiozităţi avea ambiţii totalizante pe care muzeele de azi le-au pierdut. Un cabinet de curiozităţi nu cuprindea numai „curiozităţi“; dimpotrivă, el trebuia să cuprindă, conform unei scheme bine stabilite, TOTUL. Adică naturalia, artificialia şi scientifica. Naturalia: toate cele 3 regnuri (animal, mineral şi vegetal în ordine ierarhică). Artificialia: artefacte. Scientifica: aparate de măsurat. Trebuiau să fie o lume cuprinsă într-o cameră.

Astea nu le explică Dinicu Golescu, ci Horst Bredekamp în Nostalgia Antichitatii si cultul masinilor. Istoria cabinetului de curiozitati si viitorul istoriei artei (Idea, 2007).

Pentru mine, cabinetele de curiozității erau o metafora a haosului. Iată că nu, erau taman inversul!

Tot ieri am aflat că, acum 200 de ani, colecţie se zicea strânsoare.