Exhibition History

Dvě výstavy o architektuře a politice 19. a 20. století, které se představují v Galerii UM Vysoké školy uměleckoprůmyslové a v Uměleckoprůmyslovém museu, jsou přínosné svým vědeckým obsahem a strukturou. Po stránce jeho zprostředkování skrze výstavní médium však první dalekosáhle předčí druhou.

"Earlier provisional title was "Archaeology, Tourism, Museum...."

"This chapter is divided into two distinct sections that are positioned in a point-counterpoint structure of dialogue. These two position statements invoke the etymological meanings of the word essay, to attempt, put to the test, trial, to act out, to explore, travel, and travail. The first is an historical analysis written in the third person by an anthropologist whose expertise includes the ethnography of archaeology and the anthropology of tourism. The second is a counterpoint commentary written in the first person by an anthropologist whose specializations include Pre-Columbian and historical archaeology. Both of us have significant research experience in same area of the Maya world in Yucatán, México. From these two differing vantage points, we chart our perspectives on the relationship between archaeology and tourism in terms of the problems of exploration, protection, and exploitation.
In the first section, Castañeda takes an historical approach to the emergence of archaeology in the institutional context of the modern museum. He essays an analytical and theoretical manifesto about the deep, intimate interconnections between tourism and archaeology as revealed through an understanding of the museum. In his historical analysis of the role of archaeological representation in the museum, he identifies the sociological creation of universal heritage. He theorizes a notion of the universal citizen-heir as the implied benefactor of this universal heritage. In the second section, Mathews elaborates a commentary on this historical analysis of archaeology, tourism, heritage and the museum. Specifically, she counter-argues and assesses Castañeda theoretical and analytical claims through the use of archaeology and tourism at sites that are not postcard worthy. Together these two “attempts” grapple with the historical and contemporary interconnections between archaeology and tourism. Together we put to the test our typical assumptions about the ethics of archaeologists, tourists, and tourism promoters in the contemporary contexts in which we are now beginning to ask how and why archaeology and tourism are interwoven phenomena in today’s world.""

This publication accompanies the exhibition At the Mercy of Others: The Politics of Care, May 18-June 25, 2005, organized by the 2004-05 Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellows of the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program: Sasha Archibald, Sarah Lookofsky, Cira Pascual Marquina, and Elena Sorokina

The essay grew from a presentation in “Goldfish Remembers”, a symposium curated by David Teh as part of RETURNS, an archival-driven exhibition in the Gwangju Biennale 2018; then expanded under the commission of editor Lucy Steeds (and Paul O’Neill, Simon Sheikh, Mick Wilson, eds.) for the book “Curating After the Global: Roadmaps for the Present) is co-published by LUMA Foundation, CCS Bard & MIT Press.

The Independent Group of Slovenian Artists

At the start of the 1930s, a new generation of artists, educated at the Academy of Fine
Arts in Zagreb, stepped on the Slovenian art scene. The most prominent among them
were assembled in the Independent Group of Slovenian Artists, the Independents for
short, and their art left an indelible mark on that period in history.
In the broadest sense, the Independent Group was comprised of fourteen Slovenian
painters and sculptors, though all fourteen never appeared at the same exhibition
together. The members of the Group were: Zoran Didek, Boris Kalin, Zdenko Kalin,
Stane Kregar, France Mihelič, Zoran Mušič, Nikolaj Omersa, France Pavlovec, Nikolaj
Pirnat, Marij Pregelj, Karel Putrih, Maksim Sedej, Frančišek Smerdu, and Evgen Sajovic.
It must also be said that the activities of each individual artist were distinct and
that each one also exhibited their work outside of the Group, making their own impression on the Slovenian art scene.
In their aspiration for the broadest social recognition, the Independents utilised
various strategies. They were aware of the strength of the media and made good use
of them for the purposes of popularising their art. The name they selected for themselves
is also interesting and raises the question from what or whom the Independents
were or were striving to be independent. They wished to position themselves into
the continuity of Slovenian art and present their work as its organic development. At
the same time, their chosen name walled them off from innumerable matters and asserted their independence. We can learn something about the naming process from
the statements the members themselves made on various occasions about taking the
French as their model. Furthermore, they were not the first in the former Kingdom of
Yugoslavia to adopt such a name.
Sometimes, the Independents were criticised for being too closely connected with
Zagreb professors, namely, for their foreign influences (in addition to the influence
of the Zagreb professors, especially the influence of French art). In response, the artists
themselves consistently emphasised their search for a unique artistic expression,
which was, of course, a Slovenian artistic expression, in their opinion.
In the course of their work and promotion, the Independents used many strategies
to increase their visibility and presence in the media, ensuring a greater connection
with their audience and, in the final analysis, their survival. The Group’s successful
emergence on the art scene was due to their considerable individual artistic talents,
the quality art education they received at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, the
eagerness with which they worked, and their excellent organization. They succeeded
in their endeavour because they had managed, in a short amount of time, to position
themselves within Slovenian art as a group which, while somewhat lacking in homogeneity of artistic expression, nevertheless represented artistic quality. And all of this, placed in the context of the social circumstances at the end of the 1930s, also contributed to their popularity.
During and after the Second World War, different fates befell the Group members.
Today, each and every one of them is counted as a major figure in Slovenian art history,
not only when it comes to Slovenian but also Yugoslavian 20th century painting.
Despite the fact that former members helped shape Slovenian art in significant ways
even after the war, the activities of the Group itself have never been closely examined
in art history before. Hence, along with a number of their exhibitions, my paper attempts
to present the fundamental characteristics of the Group’s activities and the reception they received.
...
Klub neodvisnih likovnih umetnikov, kratko imenovan Neodvisni, je bila verjetno najbolje organizirana skupina umetnikov v tridesetih letih 20. stoletja na Slovenskem. V najširši sestavi jo je sestavljalo štirinajst kiparjev in slikarjev. Kot bolj ali manj enotna skupina so sodelovali na šestnajstih razstavah na Slovenskem in eni v Zagrebu. Uspešnost Neodvisnih je bila povezana z izrazito izstopajočim talentom nekaterih članov, kakovostno likovno izobrazbo, ki so jo člani večinoma dobili na akademiji v Zagrebu, željo po uveljavitvi in dobro organiziranostjo.

During the 1980s and early 1990s, under the leadership of gallery curator Jill Morgan, Rochdale Art Gallery hosted a number of small but important exhibitions of work by Black Women Artists. This talk will consider some of those shows, including, Along the Lines of Resistance (March-April 1989) and discuss the work of Sutapa Biswas, Chila Kumari Burman, Lubaina Himid and Maud Sulter. Significantly, both Himid and Sulter went on to work as gallery assistants at Rochdale and each curated a series of significant exhibitions. Why and how were these artists addressing the specificities of being a woman of colour in their artwork and curatorial practice? Revisiting the work of these artist-curators offers a timely opportunity to consider the politics of race and belonging, and the extent to which exhibitions can operate as mediatory spaces. Link to event announcement: https://www.rochdaleonline.co.uk/events/63458/events-in-rochdale/talks-friends-of-rochdale-art-gallery

„Manifestation of the Idea of European Unity – Living Magna Charta of Peace“: The Political Dimension of the PRESSA Cologne 1928 and its Reception in the Contemporary German and International Press“

The PRESSA was the most ambitious and comprehensive exhibition ever held to present modern journalism. The exhibition highlighted numerous facets of contemporary journalism, including its historical roots and its cultural, technical, economic and international interdependencies to a professional audience and the general public. In addition, the exhibition also had a political dimension. Its organisers wanted to demonstrate, with the first major international fair held on German soil after the end of the First World War, that the Reich was a great power and willing and capable of contributing actively to international peace and cooperation. The political dimension of the PRESSA found its expression in the speeches held during the opening and closing ceremonies and in the official publications of the exhibition.
As a result of these high expectations the PRESSA became an international media event. The German and foreign press reported extensively the opening and closing ceremonies, and the concept and contents of the exhibition. Furthermore, the press paid particular attention to the political dimension of the PRESSA, and to the crucial role of the Cologne exhibition – and the press generally – in furthering international peace and cooperation. The intensity and euphoria with which this idea was taken up in the press leads to the conclusion that the exhibition with its emphasis on the peace mission of the press had raised an issue that concerned politicians, the public, and the press worldwide.
This essay reconstructs the political dimension of the PRESSA and its reception in the German and international press. The first part analyses the political motivations of the organisers. The second part examines the coverage of the PRESSA in selected German and international newspapers, with particular emphasis on the treatment of the political dimension of the exhibition. The final part is devoted to the question of whether or not the coverage of the PRESSA and its peace mission was too optimistic, in particular in view of the political developments in Germany and Europe after the rise to power of Nazism in 1933.

The Philippine Exposition was held in Madrid in 1887 with the aim of increasing commercial and economic relation between the archipelago and the metropolis, but also with the objective of showing its indigenous population to the Spaniards. In this sense, one of the exposition sections was devoted to the fine arts of the Philippines. Assessment of artistic quality of works of art exhibited was the subject of very disparate interpretations. For conservative Spanish critics -and even for some liberals-, the low level of the woodcarvings was presented as a consequence of the inhrerent Filipinos abilities of the Filipinos, and this circumstance was explained exclusively in ethnic terms. However, for some liberal Spanish critics and, above all, for members of the Filipino intellectual elite -the ilustrados-, the responsibility for this artistic underdevelopment lay with the Spanish colonial system, and more specifically with the Spanish regular clergy, whose educational strategy was basically aimed at the repression of Filipino intellect.

The article looks at Vitalità del negativo nell’arte italiana 1960/70 an exhibition held in the winter of 1970 at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. By showing paintings by the Roman School of Pop, kinetic environments, Arte Povera, and other installation artists in an atmosphere suffused with violence this exhibition, and by paying attention to its architectural container ( the building which had hosted the infamous Mostra della rivoluzone fascista of 1932), its curator, Achille Bonito Oliva and his frequent collaborator, the architect Piero Sartogo, exposed themselves to the accusation of having hijacked Italy’s recent avant-garde into a politically ambiguous scenario. They were engaged instead in an act of mimetic subversion: a besting of one’s potential aggressor on his own ground.

In 1967, philosopher Richard Rorty edited a volume with the programmatic title The Linguistic Turn. Since then, the social and cultural sciences have gone through several ›turns‹, e. g. the ›interpretative‹, ›iconic/pictorial‹, or the ›spatial turn‹. Such ›turns‹ stimulate new research perspectives and questions, as well as shifts in theory and method. In recent years, the ›material turn‹ is gaining prominence in the humanities and social sciences. The principle of ›thinking through things‹ and the claim that objects possess agency are especially provoking. This chapter explores the stimulating effects of the ›material turn‹ in the field of museum studies. Firstly, it recalls the early history of disciplines such as archaeology, cultural anthropology, folklore studies, and art history, which are essentially based on their involvement with material culture and on the establishment of the museum as a bourgeois institution. Secondly, it outlines the developments of the ›material turn‹ and its theoretical ambitions over the last decades. Thirdly, it discusses the theoretical and practical consequences of such a new perspective for University archives and collections, as well as for the public presentation of academic knowledge conveyed by objects and things.

Abstract
The dissertation straddles the interface of mass media, social engineering and advertising in 1930s Stockholm. Its twofold objective is firstly to outline their cultural output, targeting predominantly feminine audiences. Discussions oscillate between intertextual and contextual levels, and elucidate the spaces providing the respective settings for these media. Advertising is claimed to establish spatiotemporal spheres where the everyday meets with the semi-fictional framework of films or tie-in contests, which are thereby expanded in multifarious ways. The study also argues that newsreels visualize history overlooked in canonized history writing, by providing documentary and navigatory instruments in urban milieus now lost.

Secondly, the study encircles two sets of discourses underpinning the mass media of the nascent welfare state, the former encompassing advertising, hygiene and eugenics.The latter is a prismatic construction of the public — highlighted as citizens, consumers and patients. Exhibitions and non-fiction films often encouraged spectators to compare their life projects, medical profiles and lifestyles with those of object lessons or newsreels, channeling imperatives into them by elevating their everyday experiences and concerns to issues of national importance. The methodology is partly drawn from early film and visual culture theory, partly from feminist early film scholarship on filmgoing and the problematic of feminine mobility in consumerist culture. Contrary to the conceptualization of feminine fl nerie as contained by patriarchal capitalism, the dissertation holds that a gender-coded framework docs not nullify the value of women’s
mobility, or reduce it to capitalist goals. A wider understanding of consumerist spaces and venues entails treating them as spheres simultaneously harboring commercially homogenizing and polysemic capacities.

Chapter 1 highlights the Stockholm Exhibition 1930, presenting the grounds as a literal and conceptual panorama of architectonics, objects and issues. In contrast to several analyses of its reception, this concerns the modes of spectating adopted or rejected by audiences and critics, and the sensory and bodily implications of disorientation or discomfort brought about by glass architecture.The film Brokiga Blad is regarded as an instance of film-mediated reception, involving a gaze precipitated by a mixture of awe and rural skepsis towards functionalism.

Chapter 2 presents case studies of media with the welfare effort and the eugenics program as a backdrop. The exhibition “Mor och Barn” specifically targeted female visitors, who were called on to reflect on their part in the nation’s dwindling birth rates. This and other media events concretized the eugenic ideology’s vision of a healthier human type, and provided training grounds for opening up the private sphere to scrutiny, and the spectators themselves to civic soul-searching
and introspection.

Chapter 3 accounts for marketing policies, elucidating the interrelationship of exhibitions, films, contests and discourses on advertising. To reconstructs filmic arenas offering readers a peak at their local stars, or to learn screen dance, a few periodicals and film-related ephemera are presented.

Chapter 4 first discusses buildings offering women architectonic, cinematic, and commodity-trapped attractions. The second part is devoted to the moral outrage expressed by social reformists, worried by the perceived expansion and fusion of degenerating urban pleasures.They believed that the lifestyles of Hollywood films would jeopardize young women’s sexual virtue by, putting “ideas” into their heads. Nevertheless, indications are given that some girls were in fact attracted to the commodity values of urbanity, to the point of transgressing sexual norms to attain a desired lifestyle.

Chapter 5 focuses upon the movement H lsa genom Nakenkultur (HgN) and its alternative to urban popular culture: nudism. If the imagery carried the strongest rhetorical force for spreading the nudist credo, the exposure of nakedness was a delicate matter. To contain the potentially expansiveness of sexual connotations, the dissertation argues, nudity was screened with acculturating codes, and a repertoire of legitimizing poses, gestures and activities.

Chapter 6 discusses exhibitions launched as lobbying tools for putting the Vacations Act into operation, and the formulation of the issue as a social, economic and cultural problem. Visual culture theory is the framework for teasing out the educational aspects of displays and tableaux. From its overall topography down to vehicles, tents and books,
“Fritiden” is likened to a Heideggerian toolbox, providing a connection between eye and hand, necessary for achieving an embodied understanding of the vacation and its attributes.

This book, which accompanied an exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center Focus Gallery in New York, examines Zen for Film, also known as Fluxfilm no. 1, one of the most evocative works by Korean-American artist Nam June Paik. Created during the early 1960s, this piece consists of a several-minutes-long screening of blank film; as the film ages and wears in the projector, the viewer is confronted with a constantly evolving work. Because of this mutability, the project undermines any assumption that art can be subject to a single interpretation.

By focusing on a single artwork and unfolding the inspirations, transitions, and residues that have occurred in the course of that work’s existence, Revisions offers an in-depth look at how materiality enhances visual knowledge. A fresh perspective on a piece with a rich history of display, this catalog invites interdisciplinary dialogue and asks precisely what—and when—an artwork might be.

Revisions-Zen for Film has been reviewed in Artforum, Critical Inquiry (University of Chicago Press), and Journal of Curatorial Studies (Intellect), among others.

Les biennales internationales sont le phénomène d’art mondain et mondial des années quatre-vingt-dix par excellence. Elles répondent bien au rêve global de tous les gouvernements qui veulent représenter le savoir de la planète entière et l’amener chez eux. Les gouvernements? Certes, encore bien avant d‘être des événements d’art, les biennales sont des événements politiques. Elles naissent d’une volonté nationale, elles sont essentiellement financées par les États (aussi bien locaux qu‘étrangers) et elles sont inaugurées par une foule de hauts fonctionnaires.

The aim of this article is to study the living ethnological exhibitions. The main feature of these multiform varieties of public show, which became widespread in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Europe and the United States, was the live presence of individuals who were considered “primitive”. Whilst these native peoples sometimes gave demonstrations of their skills or produced manufactures for the audience, more often their role was simply as exhibits, to display their bodies and gestures, their different and singular condition. In this article, the three main forms of modern ethnic show (commercial, colonial and missionary) will be presented, together with a warning about the inadequacy of categorising all such spectacles under the label of “human zoos”, a term which has become common in both academic and media circles in recent years.

Since the second decade of the twentieth century, temporary exhibitions on art and archaeological fakes and reproductions have appeared in museums, galleries and research institutes in Europe and America. Aiming to educate collectors and curators, to denounce and raise public awareness of forgeries, and eventually to disseminate the value of fakes as historical documents, these exhibitions are something of a litmus test for the perception of, and critique on, this phenomenon over time. Drawing upon an anthology of paramount exhibitions held during the first half of the century, this research provides an insight on display strategies, as well as the patterns, reasons and purposes for exposing fakes and reproductions, tracing back both commonalities, differences and changes over time.

In May 2019 we launched a special exhibition at the Uganda Museum in Kampala titled “The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin.” It consisted of 150 images made by government photographers in the 1970s. In this essay we explore how political history has been delimited in the Museum, and how these limitations shaped the exhibition we curated. From the time of its creation, the Museum’s disparate and multifarious collections were exhibited as ethnographic specimens, stripped of historical context. Spatially and organizationally, “The Unseen Archive of Idi Amin” turned its back on the ethnographic architecture of the Uganda Museum. The transformation of these vivid, evocative, aesthetically appealing photographs into historical evidence of atrocity was intensely discomfiting. We have been obliged to organize the exhibition around categories that did not correspond with the logic of the photographic archive, with the architecture of the Museum, or with the experiences of the people who lived through the 1970s. The exhibition has made history, but not entirely in ways that we chose.

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Art Journal on April 2018, available at https://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00043249.2018.1456247

Contemporanea was an exhibition held in Rome at the end of 1973, a time of crucial change for both the city and the country. It took place inside a car park and was coordinated by Achille Bonito Oliva and a group of eleven curators. Still considered a fundamental point of reference by those who had the opportunity to visit it, the exhibition was especially pertinent to the generation of artists born in the 1950s. Through the interpretation of archival documents, this essay will reconstruct the path that led to the conception and realization of Contemporanea, beginning with a consideration of the sociocultural factors at play in Rome at the time, and how they related to the public's perceptions of the choice of a parking garage as an exhibition site.

The book "La smaterializzazione dell’arte in Italia 1967-1973" [The de-materialization of art in Italy 1967-1973] deals with the analysis of some Italian exhibitions, held between 1967 and 1973, particularly significant for their presentation of a new approach to the occasion of the exhibition, in terms of concept, installation, occupation of non-gallery spaces, and critical-curatorial input. In particular, this last aspect is the starting point for a reflection on the critical debate that straddled the sixties and the seventies, and on the growing importance of exhibition curating in relation to criticism.
In the book, I analysed nine exhibitions in detail: "Lo spazio dell’immagine" (Foligno, 1967); Deposito d’Arte Presente (Turin, 1968-1969); "Con temp l’azione" (Turin, 1967); "Teatro delle mostre" (Rome, 1968); "Arte povera più azioni povere" (Amalfi, 1968); "Gennaio 70" (Bologna, 1970); "Conceptual Art Arte Povera Land Art" (Turin, 1970); "Vitalità del negativo" (Rome, 1970); "Contemporanea" (Rome, 1973). For each exhibition, I examined genesis, structuring, installation, catalogue and press review, with the aim of reconstructing not only the history but also the critical debate around it.
The entire book is accompanied by a substantial set of images, including some unpublished ones found in photographic archives during the research.

An essay in the companion book to the exhibition EN MAS: Carnival and Performance Art of the Caribbean, Farewell, Farewell: Carnival, Performance and Exhibition in the Circum-Atlantic Economy of the Flesh, bids farewell to traditional definitions and representations of Carnival in the Americas in general, and the Caribbean in particular, predicated upon the etymology of Farewell to the Flesh (Carne Levare). Instead, the essay reinsert flesh at the center of the debate about this unique circum-atlantic performance that is Carnival. The first section elicits a modern theory of Carnival in the Americas by introducing a novel etymythology of Carnival as Chariot of the Sea (Carrus Navalis). It asks: "What became of Carnival during the crossing of the Middle Passage and following the experience of slavery and colonization in the Americas?". A second section follows closely the eponymous exhibition I curated for Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans by Circumambulating the 2014 Caribbean Carnival season during which myself and collaborator Krista Thompson commissioned performances to 9 artists in 7 different Caribbean cities: Nicolás Dumit Estévez at Santiago de los Treinta Caballeros (Dominican Republic); Christophe Chassol around Fort-de-France (Martinique) ; Marlon Griffith in Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago); Charles Campbell and Ebony Patterson in Kingston (Jamaica); Cauleen Smith in New Orleans; Lorraine O'Grady in New York (USA); Hew Locke in London (UK); John Beadle in Nassau (The Bahamas). Through close descriptions and evocations, I show how the various strategies deployed by the artists circumvent carnival altogether. In a third and final section I call for a reinsertion of Carnival within the counter-history of the birth of the museum and begin to suggest ways to expand upon the exhibitionary complex through various curatorial strategies.

Tras presentar algunas de las características más destacadas de la Exposición de Filipinas celebrada en Madrid en 1887 y después de situarla en el contexto de otras exposiciones coloniales de la época, analizamos con detalle las reacciones manifestadas ante la misma por algunos miembros de la elite indígena filipina residentes en España, valorando la intensidad de su ideología nacionalista y cómo esta se camufla, de uno u otro modo, tras un discurso aparentemente moralista y humanitario.

Chapter 4 of 'Art, Design and Capital since the 1980s: Production by Design' (Routledge, 2019), pp. 78–111

https://www.routledge.com/Art-Design-and-Capital-since-the-1980s-Production-by-Design/Roberts/p/book/9781138313774

Chapter 4 examines Frankfurt- and Berlin-based German artist Tobias Rehberger’s practice since the 1990s. Since that time, Rehberger has pursued various processes of design and models of delegated and collaborative production towards diverse ends, from stylish and delirious gallery installations to functional amenities and retro-futurist abstract sculptures. Invoking the model of the corporation as well as the chance operations of the Surrealist parlour game ‘Exquisite Corpse’, the chapter enlarges upon the correspondence between Rehberger’s singularly flexible approach to collaboration and the formal diversity – and dynamics of diversification – of his sculptural practice in general. The chapter argues that, by miming adjacent fields of production to contemporary art – in particular, the labour of design and its management – Rehberger enacts a self-critical inquiry into the constitution of art’s unique difference from other spheres of activity.

This article was written in 2015 and published in late 2016. It was meant to analyze and deconstruct the general criticism on the project of Humboldt Forum in the reconstructed Palace of Berlin. Why seemed the criticism to overweigh positive reaction? Who were the critics and what was their motivation? The article reflects the ever changing expectations on the site of the politicians and the academia resulting in challenges to the individuals  and teams in charge over a period of 16 years.

Animals performance has a long history, going back to the beginnings of collections and spectacles in antiquity, through the first cabinets of curiosities to zoological gardens in the Renaissance era, and through to natural history museums and the circus of the Enlightenment. Animals also had a presence in early television shows. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the participation of living creatures in the entertainment industry became controversial, although the debate on animal rights goes back to the end of the seventeenth century. Today, the history of nonhuman performers and their rights is being viewed in a much broader context, determined by the paradigm of class divisions and national identity, as well as postcolonial and gender studies.