[Reader-list] Interfaces of Art History, Museum Practices and Popular Visual Culture: A Curatorial Enquiry

[Sabih .]

*Reminder:*



Dear Friends,

this is just to remind that the *last date* for receiving the concept note,
along with long and short CV for the Hyderabad Workshop is * **2nd August,
2011.*

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*Association of Academics, Artists and Citizens for University Autonomy
(ACUA), Vadodara *

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*Invites Curatorial Concepts for the Third in the Series of Five Workshops:
*

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*Curating Indian Visual Culture: Theory and Practice** *

(An India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), Bangalore initiative, funded by Sir
Jamsetji Tata Trust)





*Venue: *

Department of Fine Arts, Sarojini Naidu School of Arts &
Communication, University
of Hyderabad, Gachibowli, Hyderabad - 500 046.

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*Dates:*

12th to 17th September 2011.

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*Thematic Focus**:* *Interfaces of Art History, Museum Practices and Popular
Visual Culture: A Curatorial Enquiry*

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*Concept Note:* In the field of artistic production, museological and art
historical practices function as validatory mechanisms and disciplinary
apparatuses. The political history of museology and museum practices
illustrates the role these institutional mechanisms have played in
validating the construction of particular histories as ‘real’ in nature and
‘universal’ in dimension. It is equally important to scrutinize the role of
art history’s institutional discursive practices, which often corroborate
these claims while dealing with the larger hermeneutical enterprises at
their disposal. Keeping in mind these larger paradigms, this workshop aims
to address the contemporary challenges in curatorial practices within
museums due to the paradigmatic shifts in the very idea of both the museum
and of curatorial practice itself. One of the significant questions this
workshop attempts to address is about the conceptual implications of the
entry of popular visual culture into the pristine/elite spaces of the museum
in the context of curatorial practices. This is especially so, given that
the museum’s ideological entrenchment and canonical status and art history’s
professional practices – connoisseurship and art criticism – constantly try
to naturalize the existing differences; and its commensurability renders
them into a universal frame of reference. Here, the museum’s notion of ‘Art’
had been playing a central role in fulfilling the social function of
totalizing and legitimating social differences.

One of the focuses of the workshop will be to explore the ways in which
non-Euro-American historical cultures – of the tribes and folk; and of the
non-Christian ‘high’ traditions – have been tamed to fit within the
Enlightenment project of commensurability. This workshop also focuses on the
changing notions and roles of museums in our contemporary context and seeks
to examine new challenges that such changes bring into the realm of
curatorial practices. On the one hand, the socio-political dimensions of
such changes seek a radical revision of existing curatorial practices, and
on the other hand open new imaginative horizons for critical curatorial
practices. This workshop seeks to explore the role of newer discursive
formation around the question of popular visual culture in the radical
transformation of museum and curatorial practices. It aims to analyze the
dialectical relationship between the conceptual and practical aspects of
curation by exploring the complex interplay of these mutually dependent and
enriching paradigms. However, for analytical purposes, this workshop may
also analyze practices in terms of conceptual frameworks and the practical
aspects of display in their own terms as well, which may enable a critical
reflection upon fresh curatorial proposals in the context of museums.
Moreover, it is an initiative to facilitate interactions between and among
workshop participants and subject experts, in order to conceptually and
pragmatically enrich such projects of historical and contemporary art -
including those which are ‘conventionally’ bracketed within the realm of
popular cultures.





*The last date for receiving the concept note, along with long and short CV
with postal address and phone numbers for the Hyderabad Workshop:*

* 2nd August, 2011**.*



* **Email it to:  artcurationworkshop at gmail.com

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*For details see URL: http://www.curationtheory.com/ (Check the button*

* ‘Functional Logistics’ for how to apply &mode of selection.   *

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*Forthcoming  **workshops*

  *Jammu** *– February 2012, *Shillong* – September 2012 & a colloquium at *
Vadodara* – December 2012



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*Please widely circulate this notice.**  *