Exhibition History

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

This paper presents a comparative study of how Canadian First Nations and New Zealand Maori peoples have employed digital technologies in the recording, reproduction, promotion and discussion of their cultural heritage. We explore a selection of First Nations and Maori initiatives that resist or creatively respond to the digitization and electronic dissemination of cultural “objects,” knowledges and landscapes as a continuation of social processes that have dynamically endured over more than two centuries. Our comparison also considers the limitations of conventional law in regard to the protection of indigenous cultural and intellectual property: expressions of traditional knowledge culture generally fall outside the protection of copyrights and patents, a situation that is often exacerbated when that heritage assumes digital forms.

"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.""

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.

A large number of International, colonial and ethnological exhibitions were held in Europe and America during the second half of the nineteenth century, all of them designed to show visitors the inferior and «wild» nature of the colonized peoples. Partially in accordance with these precedents, the Philippine Exhibition was organized in Madrid in 1887. The author discusses in general terms such age of exhibitions and calis attention to the ideological singularity of the event held in Madrid.

Between 1851 and 1958 the Christian Churches lived a period
of intense evangelizing activity. One of the most singular means to obtain
support for such activity is the ethnological-missionary exhibition. In these shows ethnographic materials of the recently or future evangelized populations were always exhibited, and, occasionally, indigenous people too, whose theoretical mission was to recreate their ancient ways of life. In this article we study the development of these events, their encounters (and disagreements) with international expositions, the form they were associated (or not) with colonial contexts and the differences we could appreciate between Catholic and Protestant exhibitions.

The author focuses on the link that can be documented between some museums and some
international exhibitions in the second half of the 19th century and the first one of the 20th. We
study specifically museums that were created from collections or materials exhibited in certain
world’s fairs or even in national exhibitions. Our areas of interest are ethnology, colonialism,
Christian missions, and folklore.

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.

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.

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.

Maia Wellington Gahtan and Donatella Pegazzano’s edited collection, Monographic Exhibitions and the History of Art, is the fruit of a remarkable symposium hosted at the Istituto Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence in March/April 2016. The event brought together likeminded scholars of art history and museum studies from around the world to speak about, to discuss, and to reflect upon the impact of monographic exhibitions on the written trajectory of art historical scholarship, and vice versa. The volume’s essays consider monographic exhibitions that occurred from the late-eighteenth through twenty-first centuries, featuring artists ranging from the Renaissance to the contemporary periods. In this way, the book is of value and of interest to scholars specializing across these many centuries.

After the successful Vatican Universal Missionary Exhibition of 1925, the Catholic Church gathered an euphoric exhibitionary-missionary momentum that reached a new climax in Spain a few years later. As part of the International Exhibition of Barcelona of 1929-1930, a Missionary Exhibition held there attracted all the missionary orders and congregations working in the country. Although this exhibition had strong martiriologic overtones, the majority of the objects then presented —including many sculptures of native types— were of ethnographic interest. Supplementary to the exhibition, an extensive repertoire of materially significant and symbolically charged events was also offered: days of study, conferences, civil and religious processions, mass eucharists, etc. The author analyzes these events and ponders on the use made by the religious orders of both ethnographic materials and ethnological knowledge.

The rather negative consequences that the Great War of 1914 had for the Catholic Church’s missionary zeal, together with the pressure against the bases of the Catholic dogma exerted from a number of natural and social sciences (such as Ethnology), compelled the Vatican to react in ways designed to reinforce the Catholic missions and bring the Church back to the spiritual and material preeminence that it had enjoyed up to fifty years ago. The Missionary Exposition of 1925 was one of the most important instances of this strategy. In addition, the Exposition made it possible for the Church to compensate for the propaganda failures that it had had until then, as a result of its unfrequent and restricted participation in international expositions and world’s fairs. The author analyzes in detail this exposition of 1925, the context surrounding it and the presumably scientific, ethnological strategy cum missionary activity that the Church designed and set to work in this epochal event.

Öz Sanayi devrimi sonrası Avrupa Devletleri'nde üretimin artması, yeni pazar ve hammadde ihtiyacını da beraberinde getirmiştir. Bu ihtiyacın giderilebil-mesi için sanayi ürünlerinin ve üretim araçlarının tanıtılması amacı ile ulus-lararası sergiler düzenlenmeye başlanmıştır. Ayrıca bu sergilerle ülkelerin bilim, sanayi, teknoloji ve tarım alanındaki gelişme ve yeniliklerinin herke-se duyurulması amaçlanmıştır. Öncülüğünü Fransa ve İngiltere'nin yaptı-ğı sanayi sergileri, ilgili ülkelerin sömürgelerinden gelen hammadde ve bu hammaddelerden üretilen sanayi ürünlerinin pazarlanmasına yönelik olarak yapılmıştır. Başlangıçta sanayi ve ticari amaçla başlatılan sergiler, Avrupa ile Avrupa dışında bulunan devletlerin kültür ve yerel sanatları arasında, etki-leşime de sebep olmuştur. 18. yüzyılın sonlarından itibaren Fransa'da ulusal düzeyde ve 19. yüzyılın ilk yarısında çeşitli Avrupa ülkelerinde düzenlenen benzer olayların doruk noktası olan Londra sergisi ilk uluslararası sergi ola-rak kayda geçmiştir. 1851 yılında Londra'da açılan sergi bundan sonra dü-zenlenen diğer uluslararası sergilere de ilham kaynağı olmuştur.

While Aotearoa/New Zealand is a world leader in the arena of family violence policy, it has a long history of violence between its Maori and Western inhabitants that continues to manifest in its policy-making structures. In this chapter, we shall introduce the Aotearoa/New Zealand cultural context and relate it to Kleinian psychoanalytic concepts (paranoid-schizoid position, splitting, idealization and introiection) describe a specific family violence policy called Te Rito before using Kleinian concepts to help us read this text. Finally, we shall critically reflect on the processes used in this chapler and explore implications of this analysis for family violence policy internationally.

Museum collections are increasingly subjected to scientific scrutiny, including molecular, isotopic and trace-element analyses. Recent advances have extended analyses from natural history specimens to historical artefacts. We highlight three areas of concern that can influence interpretation of data derived from museum collections: sampling issues associated with museum collection use, methods of analysis, and the value of cross-referencing data with historical documents and data sets. We use a case study that focuses on kiwi (Apteryx spp.) feather samples from valuable 19th century Maori cloaks in New Zealand to show how sampling and analysis challenges need to be minimized by careful design. We argue that aligning historical records with scientific data generated from museum collections significantly improves data interpretation.

My paper uses the occasion of the Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition's announcement that its network will expand to 32,000 screens by 2018 to situate the organization within a history of satellite distribution. In particular, I explore the potential significance of DCDC's existence for competing satellite networks and the alternative content and theater advertising industries they have long supported.

Founded in 2012 as a collaboration between the Big Three exhibitors, Warner Bros., and Universal Pictures (and since expanded to include other major exhibitors and studios), DCDC's network went live in October 2013. Billed as “the next evolution in exhibition,” it uses “satellite and terrestrial distribution technologies” to deliver “feature, promotional, pre-show and live content” to theaters across the US. Application of the term “evolution” to the network's implementation seems apt for two reasons. First, if the Coalition thrives, its influence on the film industry could be substantial. For example, insofar as it further limits physical media's role in the distribution-exhibition supply chain, DCDC represents another step toward realizing long-held expectations for digital cinema. Second, and perhaps contrary to DCDC's promotional rhetoric, “evolution” implies not a transformative event, but a transitional process, which sees a new “species” emerge alongside its immediate ancestor under enduring environmental conditions. My work approaches the Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition from this second vantage point, first by investigating the Coalition's origins in earlier industry developments and then by characterizing the niche it occupies within the existing film industry ecosystem.

I employ personal interviews, trade press, and secondary literature to examine the Coalition's apparent debts to earlier experiments with satellite distribution. In particular, I focus on the DCDC network's resemblance to existing distribution networks like National CineMedia's Digital Content Network, which have supplied US theaters with pre-show advertising and alternative programming since the early 2000s. That several DCDC members own or use these latter networks raises questions about the Coalition's potential effect on the theater advertising and alternative content industries. Thus, in addition to situating the Coalition within a history of distribution, I wish to establish its relevance to scholarly accounts of these two interrelated niche industries.

„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.

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.

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.