Cultural Links
Crip The Met: Making Disability Visible in the Art Museum
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rebecca Mc Ginnis, Marie Clapot
While diversity and inclusion efforts in museums have been prioritized in recent years, disability remains marginalized in this arena, with efforts often focused solely on accessibility. To be truly inclusive, museums must also embrace the perspectives and experiences of people with disabilities. Revising approaches to interpretation of museum collections is central to this shift. Crip The Met is an initiative begun last year, supported by funding from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs’ Create NYC Disability Forward Fund. This ongoing work brings together disability studies scholars, art historians, artists, museum curators and educators, and audiences to examine The Met’s collection through the lens of disability and to develop and pilot guidance supporting the inclusion of disability in museum interpretation, including labels and other texts, education programming, digital, and other content. This study describes the process, findings, and next steps of this ongoing work.
The Local Art Museum: Constructing Narratives, Representations, and User Positions
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Maja Rudloff
In Denmark the main part of the dissemination of national art history is provided by the smaller and locally anchored art museums. In-depth studies evaluating the smaller art museum’s dissemination are, however, extremely rare, despite the fact that this type of museums dominates the cultural image outside of the largest cities. The dissemination practice of smaller museums’ often function as a framing of selected parts of the museums' collection and iconic main works, which prioritize specific discourses. This is also the case with Ribe Art Museum, the local art museum of Denmark’s oldest town, which is the empirical focus of this project. Ribe Art Museum's permanent collection includes several main works, which is duplicated in the museum's dissemination across platforms such as exhibitions, the museum website, in teaching material, on guided tours, as postcards and posters, and for communication and marketing purposes. This paper is a critical analysis of the potentials and pitfalls of prioritizing "main works" and certain discourses about the visual arts, since it questions the representations, narratives, and user positionings that are created. A close reading of exhibition spaces, motifs, and work presentations can direct attention to issues relating to e.g. inclusion and exclusion, and can open up the possibility of gaining insight into how the idea of a common cultural origin manifests itself. The paper's focus on collection dissemination will provide a much needed critical analysis of an ordinary, but rarely discussed, practice and its potentials and challenges which has relevance outside of Denmark.
Designing a Cultural Catalyst: Museum Architecture in the Work of Alcino Soutinho
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Helena Barranha
Since the second half of the twentieth century, museum architecture has often been associated with urban, social, and cultural renewal. In contrast with the neoclassical museum, conceived as a temple for arts and antiquities, modern architecture proposed new forms of monumentality which materialised a vision of museums as dynamic and inclusive cultural centres, open to the city and to different audiences. Museums have always been a central theme in the work of the Portuguese architect Alcino Soutinho (1930-2013). In the 1950s, while he was still a student at the School of Fine Arts of Porto, Soutinho started a line of research that he would explore over more than five decades, combining frequent trips and visits to museums in various countries with a continuous professional practice, translated into fifteen proposals for exhibition spaces, including several unbuilt projects. Throughout his career, Alcino Soutinho has persistently addressed the concept of museum as an urban and social catalyst. Either when designing new buildings or adapting architectural heritage to museological programmes, he focused on the civic and cultural significance of the museum, envisaging its contribution to the development of the city and the surrounding territory. Drawing on a representative set of architectural projects authored by Alcino Soutinho this paper discusses different approaches to the idea of museum as an inclusive cultural catalyst. How has this topic evolved and how is it being reinterpreted today?
A Survey on Ainu-related Exhibitions in Contemporary Japan: Issues and Prospects
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Marrianne Ubalde
This study deals with the representation of Ainu people in select museum exhibits in contemporary Japan and the perception of museum visitors on these exhibits. Through surveys and interviews with museums visitors and curators, along with museum visits to several museums in Japan, this study argues that the contemporary representation of Ainu people in museums remain largely focused on traditional aspect albeit can be classified into three levels. First, in most museums, the sole focus is on the traditional or historical aspect of the Ainu people while their presence in the contemporary period is barely mentioned; second, the Ainu people as leading a traditional lifestyle even in the contemporary period; and finally, the multifaceted existence in the contemporary period are somewhat depicted in some museums. Survey results, coupled with interviews with select museum curators also revealed some dynamics in terms of the nature of museums and the varying perceptions between foreign and Japanese visitors. Additionally, while museum curators are aware of these problems, they are also confronted with several issues, making exhibition renewals and changing the narratives of the exhibitions a challenge. Finally, recent changes in the social environment along with the passage of Ainu-related laws and policies seems to promise a better representation as well as participation of Ainu people in museums in the future. The opening of the National Ainu Museum in April 2020 may also act as a springboard to further discuss the situation of Ainu people, and push for their active involvement in the future.
