British Art News: Newsletter of the British Art Network, January 2021

BRITISH ART NEWS

Newsletter of the British Art Network | January 2021

Cover image: John Gibson, Hylas Surprised by the Naiades, exhibited 1837. Marble 1600 × 1194 × 718 mm. Tate. Image released under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported)

The British Art Network (BAN) promotes curatorial research, practice and theory in the field of British art. Our members include curators, academics, artist-researchers, conservators, producers and programmers at all stages of their professional lives. All are actively engaged in caring for, developing and presenting British art, whether in museums, galleries, heritage settings or art spaces, in published form or in educational settings, across the UK and beyond.

CONTENTS 1.

Convenor’s Introduction

3.

Coordinator’s Note

5.

Events

7.

BAN Research: Post-War Painting in Regional Collections

10.

Emerging Curators Group

17.

Comment: Marcus Jack

21.

Interview: Emily Pringle on Curatorial Research

25.

BAN Research: British Landscapes

27.

About the cover image: Cora Gilroy-Ware

30.

Opportunities and Invitations

The British Art Network is supported by Tate and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, with additional public funding provided by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

CONVENOR’S INTRODUCTION The conjunction of past and present, and of multiple, different ways of engaging with historic and emerging art are things that surface constantly across the activities of the British Art Network. The Research Groups and bursary holders span the centuries and the full range of media in their interests and expertise…..

These and the membership as a whole represent a wide diversity of approaches, disciplinary affiliations and working contexts. This might seem to work against the idea of BAN as as having any sort of unity, even if we accept that ‘British art’ has a straightforwardly coherent meaning and status – something that continues to be very much in question. Does an art historian working on the 18th century share any common ground with a programmer for a contemporary art space?

What brings together a curator in a museum and an academic art historian based in a university? Or a curator in a national museum, focussed on highly specialised sub-sector of British art, and someone in a regional collection, quite possibly not holding the job title of curator, juggling numerous roles and tasks? Or, most sharply of all, any one of these individuals in employment and an independent artist-researcher, curator or producer working on a freelance basis?

One of BAN’s central functions is to help create a sense of community among a membership with such different working lives and backgrounds, whose circumstances are continuing to change given the present times. What ‘community’ really means in this context is open to interpretation, perhaps more than ever. I recently read something by the philosopher Bernard Yack which seemed to offer a productive point of reflection on this front: ‘Community’ he suggests, ‘involves awareness of difference as well as commonality. In other words, communities are composed of individuals who focus their attention on something that bridges, rather than erases, their differences’. Maintaining a sense of difference in our personal and professional experience, and our ways of thinking, as well as between the historic, modern and contemporary, while also coming together and sharing productively, is perhaps one of the central collective challenges for BAN. There is evidence of this below in Cora Gilroy-Ware’s reflections on her sensate encounters with the historic sculpture featured as our lead image, John Gibson’s Hylas and the Naiades, in the report on the works commissioned by the British Landscapes Research Group and in the various research interests/approaches set out by our Emerging Curators Group profiled below. Their different working 1

contexts and ways of operating capture the diversity of professional and creative experience which is characteristic of the present time. Meanwhile, there are reflections on curatorial precarity from Marcus Jack, which highlights the conditioning experience of our particular moment. Emily Pringle’s careful reflections on research in museums point to the possibilities for a programmatic rethinking and reorientation of what the curatorial may be or mean. This may be apparent too in the productive academic-museum collaboration reported upon by the Research Group, Post-War Painting in Regional Collections.

BAN itself needs to reorientate and rethink, so that it help respond to and reflect upon these shifting contexts, ways of acting and modes of practice. The reformation of the curator role, and the now familiar refrain about becoming ‘inclusive and representative’ (or attempts at ‘decolonising’) are not opposed or even separate projects. How our different histories – personal, collective, present or forgotten, obscured or materialised in the art we engage with and in roles we may occupy – can be kept productively in view alongside that effort is another question again, which can nonetheless hardly be avoided.

Some of the first events organised by this round of BAN bursary holders are flagged below and register something of the collective effort towards reengaging British art curating, across sectors, professional constituencies, and disciplines. The BAN team is also making plans for later in 2021 and 2022 which we hope will further this effort at rethinking the curatorial, with these questions in mind. This will include supporting a programme of activity that takes the place of our annual conference in the Summer and working towards a new round of bursaries to run in 2022. But we are also effecting changes within BAN. We will launch a new website later this year, with potential for more contributed content, more news and information, and greater transparency about who BAN is – the team, the steering group, the bursary holders and the membership at large. It will be, we hope, a way of extending and deepening the sense of BAN as a community – at least in the nuanced sense set out by Yack.

Martin Myrone Convenor, British Art Network mmyrone@paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk

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COORDINATOR’S NOTE Hello British Art Network members, I hope this email finds you safe and well.

My thoughts go out to everybody facing challenges at this difficult time. We hope your engagement with the Network will continue to be a support to you….

I want to highlight that the majority of BAN’s members receive our communications to a work email address so if you’d like to change your contact email to a personal one, due to furlough or changing circumstances, do please get in touch via britishartnetwork@tate.org.uk. Whilst furloughed, you can still take part in training and networking opportunities so do explore these opportunities to connect with other BAN members and groups where you can.

You’ll see that Research Group activity is now really taking off, with a number of events taking place over the coming month. Meanwhile, online content from the three most recent BAN events has been published in a new resources section on the BAN webpage and we look forward to sharing videos from UAL Decolonising Arts Institute’s BAN seminar series soon.

The 2021 Emerging Curators Group (ECG) have started coming together via Zoom, getting to know each other and exploring research interests and professional challenges. In this newsletter, the 15 group members introduce themselves, their work and research interests. An important part of the ECG initiative is to connect emerging curators with others in the field, and in the spirit of this, we invite Network members to get to know more about the research the ECG members are undertaking. Do email me if you would like to be put in touch with any of the ECG members.

One challenge in our current remote world is to find opportunities for informal networking, and organic, unstructured meetings and conversations. In midDecember, we held our first BAN online social event, inviting bursary awardees and the BAN Steering Group to trial the platform High Fidelity. High Fidelity mimics real life audio experience, as you hear people’s voices gradually come into earshot as you get closer to them. We had missed the buzz and hum of an event, knowing that lots of other interesting conversations were happening around you, and hearing familiar voices rise and fall in the background. It was a surreal but fun experience, as we navigated our little avatars around an aerial view image of 3

the Tate Britain rotunda with Christmas tree installation, dropping into various conversations. This was the closest experience I’d had to an actual networking event since last March, with both the exciting spontaneity and the awkwardness that these events can bring. Sadly lacking were any trays of drinks and snacks being passed round all of our homes! We’ll keep looking for ways to recreate such an experience, as well as other informal occasions where we can learn which platforms work well and how best to utilise them.

Thank you all for the interest and creativity you bring to the Network. As we continue to navigate a challenging time, it’s more important than ever to strengthen our connections and our collective spirit. I look forward to seeing many of you online at forthcoming BAN events.

Jessica Juckes Coordinator, British Art Network jessica.juckes@tate.org.uk

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EVENTS

28 January: Race, Empire and the Pre-Raphaelites Objects in Focus: Decolonising Victorian Art and Design?

12:00 – 14:00, via Zoom By using Birmingham’s rich collections as a starting point, we aim to facilitate wider conversations about how Pre-Raphaelite and Arts & Crafts material might be displayed and interpreted for the 21st-century museum and its diverse audiences. The first event will feature responses to Victorian objects in Birmingham’s collection by Fariha Shaikh, Sally-Anne Huxtable, Wayne Modest, Gursimran Oberoi, Caitlin Beach and Nicola Thomas, followed by informal breakout sessions where we will look together at a range of Pre-Raphaelite and Arts & Crafts objects and discuss how they might be reinterpreted in the context of race and empire.

For more information and to join the Group, contact: Race.Empire.PRB@gmail.com

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11 February: Landscape Mapping the Landscape 13:30 – 15:30, via Zoom Maps tell many stories of our landscape through the places they depict. Find out more about a range of historical maps and how they can provide insight into themes of identity, power and authority. Explore how artists have used maps to reinterpret our surroundings and contemporary mapmakers reactivate collections to create future maps. Speakers include: Nick Millea, Map Librarian, Bodleian Library; Alison Byrne, University of York; Lisa Temple Cox, artist; and Garrett Carr, curator, lecturer, writer and map-maker.

For more information and to join the Group, contact Emma Roodhouse: emma. roodhouse@colchester.gov.uk 15 February: Post War Painting in Regional Collections A collective taskforce workshop to audit diversity among John Moores Painting Prize winners 13:00 – 16:30, via Zoom The John Moores Painting Prize was established in 1957 in order to encourage excellence in British painting. The Prize is anonymously judged, theoretically creating a more level playing field for unknown artists. By auditing catalogues from a sample of consecutive editions, we hope to establish whether the Prize invited more diverse field of talent than more conventional institutions. We hope this statistical research will provide the basis for investigation of overlooked artists and further support studies of marginalised practitioners in the post-war period, particularly in terms of representation within regional collections.

For more information and to join the Group, contact Sophie Hatchwell: s.hatchwell@bham.ac.uk

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BAN RESEARCH Post-War Painting in Regional Collections We established the ‘Post War Painting in Regional Collections’ Research Group with two aims in mind, first to recognise the excellence of our regional public art collections and in doing so, mount a deliberate challenge to the centre-periphery model that dominates the narrative of British art …

Second, to explore how research conducted both within and across the Higher Education and Museums sectors can usefully shape new interpretations of regional post-war collections. Over the last year, our events have increasingly considered questions of diversity in regards to regional collections (is there diversity? How can/should we diversify collections?), guided by the focus and priorities of our Group’s members. Throughout all of this, cross-sector collaboration remains the driving force of our Group’s work, informing and shaping the subjects we look at and the events we arrange. It is built into the structure of our Group, which was established by both academic Art Historians working within universities and by Curators, working in public galleries. We have found this to be a great asset in developing the Research Group, in promoting emerging research into Post-War collections, and facilitating networking in the field. This short article presents our reflections on Curatorial-Academic collaboration, based on our experiences over the last year.

John Michael Wishart, Moths on a Blue Path 1963. © the artist’s estate. Photo: The New Art Gallery Walsall

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Collaboration as a networking tool One of things I was most excited about when co-founding the Post War Painting Research Group was meeting people who were also working on regional art collections. My academic experience has been that regionalism is not traditionally a very highly valued topic in the Humanities, and so there are limited opportunities to develop scholarship around this subject. In contrast, the regional public arts sector, although perhaps similarly often overlooked, boasts an embarrassment of riches when it comes to archives and resources documenting regional art practice and reception. Establishing the Research Group has created a space where those researching this subject can come together with those who can provide access to these archives and resources. The outcome is a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and expertise. Academics are offered unique access materials that would otherwise be hard to get to. Curators are recognised as experts on this material, and curatorial work valued as a central contribution to research in the field. Challenges exist of course: the need to negotiate the different priorities of our respective fields is something we have to contend with.

But overall, pooling resources and knowledge has been very beneficial. One of our big successes, our involvement in the redistribution of the Derbyshire Schools Library Service art collection, came as a result of our successful networking practice. I was contacted by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, who were handling the redistribution of the Collection: they had heard about our Research Group and hoped we could get the word out about the distribution process. As a result of this, a number of our Curatorial members successfully applied to acquire works and so lots of important post-war paintings and works on paper have found new homes in regional public collections, from York, to Liverpool, to Pallant House and beyond.

Sophie Hatchwell, University of Birmingham s.hatchwell@bham.ac.uk

Increasing the Visibility of Collections Regional Collections are rich in history, stories and incredible artworks. They are ripe for research, discussion and, essentially, serious attention. At the same time, these collections are often funding- and staffing-poor. For me as a Collections Curator (and as a department of one!) a key part of my role is to be able to promote our Collections, and make them accessible to the widest possible audience. It is wonderful to be able to collaborate with the British Art Network and academic partners to expand the scope for research into our Collections, and to make our work more visible to partners in other institutions across the country.

Valuable collaborations and knowledge exchange can occur that otherwise would not have happened. I look forward to hearing the narratives which 8

emerge and seeing the wonderful topics brought to life through BAN events.

Julie Brown, Collections Curator, The New Art Gallery Walsall julie.brown@walsall.gov.uk @JulieNAGWalsall

Promoting and Diversifying Our Understanding of Regionalism Regional collections offer an extensive yet underused resource for a diverse range of academic research. Exempt from the blockbuster exhibition culture that typifies the national museums, these collections contain uniquely contextualised information about a huge variety of work- and so offer an important opportunity for exploring the heterogeneity of British art practice. Projects discussed amongst our network members range from local art movements to key pieces by canonical names; quantitative surveys of diversity in provincial holdings and how this reflects the local populace, to research into affective community-led curatorial praxis. The targeted knowledge offered by curators of Post-war regional collections is key to guiding academic researchers towards the essential focal points of specialist areas. Collaboration between curators and academics can dedicate further resources to help shape the taxonomy of existing holdings, and ensure that future acquisitions find a meaningful place within the institution. Last year’s event on ‘Regionalism, Value and Diversifying Post War British Art’ provided an important opening conversation about the different ways in which we could identify, situate and communicate the diversity of regional Post-war painting practice, from a joint academic-curatorial-learning and engagement perspective.

This year, we are exploring practice-based research, and our first meeting for 2021 is an experiment in how we can apply quantitative analysis to the study of exhibition history, and whether this can uncover new information about the diversity of post-war painting practice. We warmly welcome you to join this event: ‘A collective taskforce workshop to audit diversity among John Moores Painting Prize winners’, February 15th at 1pm, via zoom.

Hana Leaper, Liverpool John Moores University H.M.Leaper@ljmu.ac.uk

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EMERGING CURATORS GROUP The new Emerging Curators Group have been meeting and planning their workshops and individual research projects. Here the individual members take the opportunity to present themselves and their research interests.

Chiedza Mhondoro is currently a post-graduate student in eighteenth century British art at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her research interests lie in the visual and material culture produced in the trans-Atlantic world, focusing on Britain’s connection to North America and the Caribbean, and its positioning in a global context. She also traces the resonances of this complex art history in the work of contemporary British artists.

Chiedza values the ability to incorporate varied perspectives into British and international art historical narratives at a time when curators, academics and others within arts institutions are increasingly being called to participate in a nuanced dialogue on the social, political and cultural experience of our localities. She looks forward to the critical exchange and sharing of expertise within her Emerging Curators Group cohort during the completion of their collaborative project.

Clare Gormley is a curator and researcher based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is Head of Programmes and Partnerships at Belfast Photo Festival. Previously, Clare was Assistant Curator at The MAC Belfast, where she worked across the visual arts programme, curating a range of exhibitions including the group show, ‘On Refusal: Representation & Resistance in Contemporary American Art’ (2019). Prior to this, she held curatorial and research positions at institutions including TATE; Pangolin London; Catalyst Arts; and Islington Exhibits, and has worked as an independent curator for organisations such as PS² and Outburst Queer Arts Festival. Clare is a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art (MA), and the Glasgow School of Art (BA). Clare is the founder and co-convener of the

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Northern Irish Art Research Group as part of the British Art Network.

Ellie Tait is a North Easterner whose work is around issues of identity and representation. Ellie helps with understanding of different perspectives to reach new audiences, be welcoming and avoid inadvertent discrimination.

Ellie’s work encourages a move away from acceptance of anthropological mindsets to emancipatory approaches - so participatory work is not just informed by community links but shaped by the community from the outset. Reframing perspectives is the heartbeat of Ellie’s practices. As a critical friend Ellie gently challenges and encourages you to stretch and grow through supportive and constructive conversations.

Ellie throws a spotlight on artificial institutional, community and personal hierarchies that underpin inequitable approaches and stifle change.

Ellie champions supporting artists who are facing barriers and helps with understanding of why people can be rightfully distrustful of the arts sector.

This non-traditional bio is an equitable approach Ellie uses to focus on the benefits people bring.

Harvey Dimond is a British-Barbadian artist, writer and curator based between Glasgow, Scotland and Athens, Greece. Currently working independently, they produce exhibitions, public lectures and community events.

During their studies at The Glasgow School of Art, they co-founded the GSA People of Colour Collective, in order to create networks of support and solidarity for people of colour in higher education in Glasgow. They write about the historical and contemporary intersections of colonialism, queerphobia and the climate crisis.

Janet Couloute has a practice and academic background in social work and art history. Believing that the visual arts are particularly adept at stimulating debate, Janet has used her art historic interests to encourage students to openly engage with complex and controversial subjects such as the impact of racism and anti-oppressive practice.

Similarly, as a Tate gallery guide, acutely aware of the Eurocentric ideals that underpin the curatorial and art historic retelling of British art histories, one of Janet’s proudest achievements was to introduce for the first time, 11

since the guided tours conception, a series of African heritage tours that seek to fill in the gaps regarding Britain’s colonial past and present. More recently Janet has completed a PhD thesis entitled, Visual Images of Madness and Insanity in European artistic traditions from the seventeenth to eighteenth century.

Highlighting the dearth of representations of black emotionality in European artistic canons, the focus of Janet’s research will be on reimaging and reimagining John Simpson’s, Head of a man, (Ira Frederick Aldridge?) by applying Fredrick Douglas’ revisionist aesthetic theory of portraiture.

Jess Starns is an artist whose creative process is participatory, collaborative and inclusive with a focus on disability and neurodiversity. Jess completed her Inclusive Arts Practice MA at the University of Brighton where Jess and 8 other participants curated the Neurodiversity Museum. Jess is the founder of ‘Dyspraxic Me’, is experienced with supporting young people and works within museums.

Jess was awarded a place on the Shaw Trust ‘Power 100’ 2018 list of the most influential and inspirational disabled people in Britain. www.jstarns.com Lauren Craig (She/her/hers) is a social media shy, internet curious cultural futurist based in London. Her polymathic practice encompasses her experiences as an artist, independent cultural researcher, and curator. She has a background in ethical, social and environmental entrepreneurship and reproductive justice. Her current practices as a full spectrum doula and celebrant satisfy an interest in contemporary celebration and commemoration alongside a desire to build event-based/long-lasting creative, collaborative and caring communities.

Inspired by archives, lived experience and futurity her work transverses performance, installation, experimental art writing to moving image and photography recent 12

screenings at the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Goldsmiths (2020) and Tate Britain (2019) and talks at Tate, British Art Network, Women’s Art Library. Craig’s curatorial practice emerges from her conceptual thought leadership and manifests various collaborative and reparative modalities from practice-based research to publication and exhibition. Currently co-curating a survey show for Rita Keegan at South London Gallery, Autumn 2021 Lisa Kennedy is a curator with experience working across the museum, arts and education sectors. As part of this programme, Lisa will be delving into one of her (many) research interests, focusing on better understanding relevance within the context of museums and galleries.

Lisa seeks to engage with documentary photographers and filmmakers through qualitative approaches to hear their thoughts and perspectives centred on two themes: 1) The relationship between British art and notions of British identity and 2) the role of British art in a post-Brexit world.

Drawing from her studies in History and Socially Engaged Practices in museums and galleries, Lisa is keen to bridge research, perspective and lived experiences authentically within this broader conversation around relevance.

Lorna Rose is a developing arts practitioner whose interests lie in Black contemporary art and questioning the structures and processes that marginalise Black creatives. Lorna is particularly interested in the place and experiences of Black British curators and how the curatorial process can be reimagined.

Lorna is currently undertaking a research and development project called ‘Spaces to Speak’, to elevate and profile the voices of Black creatives in Plymouth.

Lorna also works at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter.

Lorna has a passion for social justice and equity and has extensive experience of working in the voluntary sector, primarily working with and advocating for, adults and young people from marginalised groups.

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Listening, laughing and being part of conversations that create change, is integral to who Lorna is.

Marta Marsicka is a curator and art historian based in Birmingham. She works as Programme Coordinator at Centrala gallery, creating and implementing on and offsite events and exhibitions.

Her interests and practice involve Central and Eastern European art, history of political art and issues surrounding identity and representation. Recently, she has been involved in ‘In-between-spaces’ research project (University of Birmingham, Centrala), focusing on the underrepresentation of CEE artists in British creative economy.

Marta’s goal as an arts practitioner is to question the status quo and make the British art scene as diverse as its society.

Dr Prerona Prasad is Curator of The Heong Gallery at Downing College, Cambridge, where she has worked since January 2016. Prerona started off as the Exhibitions and Programming Manager, before turning her hand to curation. She has curated or co-curated eight exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. Since March 2020, her focus has been divided between the curatorial and operational challenges thrown up by COVID-19, and shaping future programming for the Gallery.

The rupture caused by the pandemic has led to new thinking about gaps in the exhibitions programme and ways in which to take the Gallery’s offer online. She hopes that being part of the Emerging Curators’ Group will spark new ideas and generate insights through dialogue with other curators across the country.

For her project, she will define the methodological and critical parameters of an alternative ‘British Art’ season of exhibitions, programmed for 2023-4.

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Ryan Kearney is a curator and writer based in Nottingham.

His on-going research centres on queer night-time space, with a focus on gentrification, memory and crossgenerational exchange.

As part of the Emerging Curators Group, Ryan will consider how oral history can be used to document unrecorded LGBTQI+ space, and how a collaboration between participant, researcher and artist can translate architectural recollection into visual record.

Ryan is Programme Assistant of Public Programmes and Research at Nottingham Contemporary where he assists the research and production of discursive events.

Previously, he was co-curator at Recent Activity from 201719 and has delivered projects at Birmingham Hippodrome; Galerija Vartai; Parafin; Block Universe; and Grand Union.

Ryan’s writing features in Frieze and this is tomorrow.

Sam Metz is an artist and curator based in the north of England. They studied Architecture and Critical Theory at University of Nottingham and have previously trained in physical theatre. They currently work at BEYOND Arts and Pyramid of arts in arts development for adults with learning disabilities as well as being a freelance artist and researcher.

As an emerging curator Sam is influenced by disabilityled approaches to interpretation, particularly focusing on sensory modalities of understanding supported by a research grant from Sustainability Health Environment Development (S-H-E-D) and Necessity.

As a neurodivergent artist and curator with sensory processing differences, Sam creates work in non-verbal ways that begin and end in movement and embodied interactions without recourse to traditionally privileged verbal and written forms of communication.

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Siobhan McLaughlin is an artist, freelance curator and researcher. She is the curator of Alan Davie: Beginning of a Far-off World, a centenary exhibition held at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh (January-March 2021, currently postponed). In 2020 she researched and wrote 160 short artist biographies for the Jay and W. Gordon Smith Collection of Scottish Art, a book which sits alongside an exhibition currently on at the Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh.

Her curatorial research focuses predominantly on postwar Scottish Art and opening up private collections to the public, with an interest in tackling elitism and accessibility to the arts. Through the ECG, she aims to research the possibilities of non-hierarchical, accessible and feministdriven models as alternatives to the established art institutions that currently dominate the cultural sphere.

Umulkhayr Mohamed (she/her) is a Welsh Somali artist, writer, and curator. Her artistic practice involves creating primarily artist moving image and performance work that explores the tension present between enjoying the act of wandering between emancipatory temporalities and a functional need to position oneself in the now. Umulkhayr will be using her time as a part of British Art Network’s Emerging Curator Group to explore how curators should learn from the legacy of ‘political blackness’ and how it manifested in the Black British Art Movement, in curating Black British Art since this movement.

She is currently working within Public Programming at Amgueddfa Cymru-National Museum Wales, where she is a part of the core creative team working on ‘The Future has a Past’ an exhibition that imagines the future of Wales.

She is also the lead curator of Lates: PITCH BLACK, a collaboration between AC-National Museum Cardiff and Artes Mundi that will be a multi-artform celebration of Blackness as boundless and infinite. In addition to joining BAN’s Emerging Curators Group Umulkhayr is also a member of Black Curators Collective, a collective of Black women and non-binary curators working across the UK.

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COMMENT On Some Conditions Facing an Early Career Curator I arrived early for the first meeting of British Art Network’s Early Career Curators Group (ECCG) in June 2019, so spent some time with Mike Nelson’s The Asset Strippers (2019) which had then filled Tate Britain’s Duveen Galleries with orphaned industrial machinery, grease and dust…..

The installation comprised a sprawl of heavy objects gleaned from asset stripping—the vampiric practice of profiteering from the sale of a failing company’s assets. Sometimes imprinted with imperial insignia, the provenance of these defunct machines was scored onto every surface. Nelson’s landmark commission brought the reality of neoliberalism into the gallery through the debris of British manufacturing, its first victims. A year after The Asset Strippers opened, COVID-19 would hasten the effects of this pernicious policy model on the culture and heritage sectors themselves, precipitating large-scale redundancies and raising the question of whether collections should too sell their assets.

The museum, the gallery and the academy are, as many of us recognise, now firmly in the grip of such forces. In an essay published before he permanently bowed out of curating, “The New Conservatism: Complicity and the Art World’s Performance of Progression” (e-flux conversations, 2017), Morgan Quaintance maps an unsettling series of recent instances in which public-private partnerships have seen public arts subsidy siphoned off by private interests. Curators Lina Džuverović and Irene Revell’s article “Lots of Shiny Junk at the Art Dump: The Sick and Unwilling Curator” (Parse 9, 2019), asks outright whether the curatorial career is a Ponzi scheme by another name. In 2016, Creative Scotland’s Visual Arts Sector Review revealed that the average total income of survey respondents was £17,526 p.a., with further indictments including a far larger than average wage gap across genders. From lived experience, contracts are overwhelmingly temporary, inextricably linked to funding which is rarely secured beyond a threeyear term. These things are never too far from mind: latent fears, baked into the subconscious of the precariat, allayed briefly by conversations, colleagues and the work—the magnetic objects and practices of art which it’s all in service to. For a while now, however, the work has felt to me a bit like the pilot light in a rundown boiler, persevering but perpetually at risk of being extinguished.

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Detail from Mike Nelson’s The Asset Strippers at Tate Britain (2019). Photograph: Matt Greenwood Š Tate

In December 2019, six months into the ECCG programme, the cohort had our third in-person meeting: a two-day session within the inspiring surroundings of The Hepworth Wakefield, where a two-person show of early paintings by Alan Davie and David Hockey was touting the virtues of interconnection and influence. By then, aided by dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant with a BYOB policy, the group had built enough trust to become something other than a professional development network. Unprompted, members shared stories of exploitation, anxiety and frustration with the tacit understanding that what had emerged was a space of solidarity. A sense of early career exhaustion cut across working contexts and identities. It got me thinking about how we build resilience, how not to burn out.

Lockdown was called in the UK ten days before our third meeting. At the outset of the pandemic, Warsaw-based curator Kuba Szreder asked if what we are facing is in fact the end of globalisation (“Independence Always Proceeds from Interdependence: A Reflection on the Conditions of the Artistic Precariat and the Art Institution in Times of Covid-19,” L’Internationale, 2020). COVID-19, he argues, has revealed how the autonomy, interconnection and mobility of art workers has been heavily dependent on accessible public infrastructure maintained by an invisible workforce, often underpaid women, whose care labour has long underwritten the global circulation of art—elsewhere dubbed the artworld’s dark matter by Gregory Sholette.

At the time of writing, the cohort now hasn’t met in-person for exactly one year. Migration to exclusively digital communication has tested group working in all forms. Within the ECCG—or its ongoing group chat more specifically—I am, however, grateful to have found an enduring commitment to sharing resources, opportunities and news. I know many of these connections will be called upon long into the future. It might not be the design of any professional development programme, but something powerful is wrought in the convening of commonality. Anticipating further tides of destabilisation in the sector which invariably impact those nearest the bottom, it seems increasingly pertinent that trusting spaces such as these—alongside unions, co-ops and representational networks—are directly resourced and able to participate in rigorous evaluations of where we have been and where we are going.

In his essay “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat” (1923), philosopher György Lukács compels us not to mistake social relations for things. Following this train, we can understand categories—academic disciplines, movements, genres—as culpable in the bourgeois reification of knowledge, in pulling up the drawbridge. As long as art and its history are encoded as objects of study, distinct from our individual lived experiences, the curator remains an agent of such reification. This reified curatorial must 19

be held to account. Its myths of connoisseurship, of the necessity of self-sacrifice, of taste and classlessness, and of an artworld which sits outside the programme of neoliberalism belie the very deep inequity upon which it sits. The constitution of the ECCG 2019/2020 itself, it must be acknowledged, replicated much of this prejudice: largely middle-class, mostly in institutional employment, all white. For me, and I think for my colleagues too, the challenge for curators now is to found a new curatorial: one that exercises the same values in private as in public; one that acts in solidarity and resistance; and one that works to undo the classism, ableism, racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia which have enabled our own autonomous, interconnected and mobile being. It’s not so much a case of servicing the old boiler but of divesting completely, digging deep and sourcing a more sustainable kind of energy.

Marcus Jack is a curator and art historian based in Glasgow. He is the founder of Transit Arts, editor of the DOWSER publication series, and is currently completing a PhD in the history of artists’ moving image in Scotland. In 2019-20 he was a member of BAN’s Early Career Curators Group and in 2021 will continue as a member of BAN’s Steering Group.

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INTERVIEW Emily Pringle On Curatorial Research Emily Pringle is Head of Research, Tate, a member of the BAN Steering Group and author of Rethinking Research in the Art Museum (Routledge, 2019). Emily was to be keynote speaker at the cancelled BAN Conference ‘Research and the Museum Ecosystem’, scheduled to take place at National Museum Cardiff in March 2019. Here, Emily discusses with Martin Myrone some of the themes apparent in the recorded presentations, now made available with her introductory essay here.

M. Something that strikes me about all the presentations is the emphasis on questions of curatorial agency – how curators operate within or against institutional settings. But then there is also a lot of emphasis on sharing, devolving or dissolving curatorial authority. What’s the place of individual curatorial agency in museums?

And am I wrong to conflate agency and authority like this?

I think there is still a vital need for curatorial expertise within museums and for curators to have agency to make best use of their expertise. I am more troubled by the idea of curatorial authority as it brings to my mind unhelpful notions of epistemological hierarchies and the problematics of the curator being the only person entitled to have an ‘authoritative’ interpretation of art. The recent drive to more collaborative working practices, wherein curatorial expertise sits alongside the expertise of others, both fellow museum practitioners and those external to the museum, in my view can open up opportunities to enrich the curation and interpretation of art without undermining curatorial agency. For me this shift away from a singular curatorial authority is indicative of the changing place of the art museum within contemporary society and culture; a shift towards the art museum as a site of collective knowledge creation rather than as a temple of art. Curators have a crucial role to play in enabling this transformation, but in doing so they have to relinquish the sense that they and only they can determine the meaning and value of art. It is interesting and a bit troubling to me that a number of the papers indicate that for curators to make this move they have to work in opposition to their institutions.

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M. You make striking use Donna Haraway’s thoughts about ‘staying with the trouble’, something that she posits as a productive response to our moment where everything seems so uncertain. But is it also that we are, after 2020, in a moment of very definite views and actions, about social justice, about class and race, political self-interest?

Is ‘staying with the trouble’ curatorially about working with or against the prevailing conditions of our times?

I am very drawn to Haraway’s ideas of ‘staying with the trouble’ in part because she argues that to do this we are required to be ’truly present’ and be prepared both to make trouble and to ‘rebuild quiet places.’ I interpret this to mean that we must reflect and take action to address the problems that we face currently, be they ones of social justice, ecological disaster and/or all the myriad challenges we are facing because of the Covid-19 pandemic. I don’t think I would frame in in terms of working either with or against the prevailing conditions, but rather think of it in relation to acknowledging the complexity of the situation we are in and committing through every curatorial decision and action we take to make a positive difference. What artists do we chose to show? Who gets to make those decisions? Who do we prioritise as an institution in terms of audiences? Whose voices are present in the interpretation of the work? How do we as individuals and as an institution learn from the decisions we make? These are some of the questions that curators who are ‘staying with the trouble’ need to be asking themselves, whilst also recognising that there are no easy answers and that it is vital to acknowledge complexity and the care that is needed to make change.

M. I was struck by Ólöf Gerður Sigfúsdottir’s allusion to the ‘double agency’ embodied in curatorial research. Is this positioning ‘between’ fields, institutions or disciplines a condition for research? Can research be wholly organised within and contained by a museum and remain research in the critical, reflexive sense that you’ve carefully set out?

Olof makes a compelling case in her paper for the museum as a site for knowledge generation and the specificity and value of museum-based research, a great deal of which aligns with my thinking. I see the museum as affording modes of research that are in some cases harder to undertake within the academy, in part because of the opportunities for cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary enquiry that the museum can accommodate. Museums are not universities and although they can present multiple barriers to research, they are also relatively free from the regulatory and rigid disciplinary barriers that can exist within the academy. Museums are not, for example, subject to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) assessment, an exercise that has been criticised for curtailing practice-based research. They are instead at liberty to determine for themselves what constitutes research centred in and seeking to inform practice.

At the same time, it is vital that museums work closely with researchers situated 22

in the academy in equal partnership. Research wholly organised with and contained by any institution would seem to me to run the risk of being solipsistic and potentially not subject to sufficient critical interrogation. Instead, in my experience the most fruitful positioning for research in the art museum is both within and ‘between’ institutions, with practitioner-researchers in the museum working reflexively with academic researchers from the university to enable the new insights gained to inform museum practice and the academy.

M. The idea of ‘practice as research’ has become prevalent, even dominant, in our sector, it seems quite suddenly over perhaps just the last 5 years. Does that timeframe sound right to you? And what do you see as the conditions or changes which have given rise to this development?

I think there have been drives to recognise practice-based or practice as research in education more broadly and in theatre and fine art departments in art schools and universities specifically for more like 20 years. The latter has been prompted in the UK by the institutions’ involvement in research assessment exercises and the need to justify art and theatre practice as research to qualify for research funding. Such attempts to frame fine art practice as research have definitely impacted on art museum-based activity, both within curatorial and learning departments, particularly as you say in the last 5 years. At the same time writers/theorists such as Paul O’Neill and Mick Wilson have been active in arguing for curatorial practice to be understood as research-based; as a form of dialogical practice ‘in which the processual and serendipitous overlap with speculative actions and open-ended forms of production’, as they say in their 2015 book ‘Curating Research.’ Rather than seeing curating as exclusively linked to exhibition making, they put forward a more expanded conception of curating as an active form of knowledge production. And as soon as you determine an activity such as curating in epistemological terms, it is relatively easy to align it with research. One of the positives stemming from this broader construction of the curator is that it recognises the research that has in my view always been a key element of curation, but that until recently has not been given due attention.

M. To a sceptic, a lot of what is classed (and funded as) as ‘practice as research’ looks a lot like, well, practice – educational workshops, consultation sessions, marketing analysis, creative work etc. Is practice as research just a euphemism for practice, and the kinds of museum practice which in other (more affluent times) would be funded in other ways?

I have enjoyed the conversations we have had together over the years in relation to this point! I agree with you that at times it is difficult to unpick where the research exists within some practice as research and I would argue that we need to be very clear and specific in relation to this. Otherwise practice as research 23

loses any credibility. I think it is important to clarify in the first instance what constitutes research, and then to make clear the difference between practice and practice as research. In relation to the first point, having looked at several definitions of research I am keen on the simple understanding of research as needing to be led by a question, that it follows a structured process of enquiry and that it must generate original knowledge that goes out into the world. In differentiating between practice and practice as research, I am a fan of the writer Robin Nelson’s clarification. He argues that for practice to move to practice as research it must be underpinned by a research question, that the process of enquiry must involve moments of critical reflection and be fully documented and that the praxis under scrutiny must be situated within the appropriate practical and theoretical lineage. If these processes are followed then I think it is possible to avoid practice as research becoming a euphemism for practice, but again it requires time and thought to do this.

M. There is a recurring question raised in the presentations and by your own programmatic analysis, which is not just about how to do curatorial research, but who gets to do it? With that in play, do you think ‘curator’ as a term retains its validity?

I do think the term ‘curator’ still has validity and I am not convinced by the argument that surfaces periodically that we are all curators now because we select our own Spotify playlists, for example. The curator within the art museum has a clear and important role to play in terms of building and holding knowledge about the art and artists and in communicating this knowledge through displays, exhibitions, interpretation and public programmes (for a start). However, in the twenty-first century art museum, curators are not the only people with valuable expertise and in my view the shift that needs to take place is more structural than semantic. Entrenched hierarchies and processes within art museums that embed discrimination and exclusion need to be fully acknowledged and dismantled and new models developed that allow for multiple narratives to exist in relation to art. It is, as you recognise, vital that museums pay very close attention to who gets to be a curator, but they also need to pay equal amounts of attention to how curators work, not least with the other ‘experts’ across and beyond their organisations.

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BAN RESEARCH British Landscapes In September 2020, the Landscape Research Group put out an open call for artistic and creative responses to the theme of Landscape in Lockdown.

“We were thrilled with the volume, range and quality of the proposals and were particularly impressed by two submissions that we felt captured the essence of lockdown – showcasing resilience, imagination and new ways of engaging with the landscape from our lockdown worlds.” – Helen Record, Curatorial Assistant, Royal Academy.

The two successful proposals were: Siobhan McLaughlin, artist and freelance curator based in Glasgow. Siobhan’s practice sits between abstracted landscape and an expanded form of painting. In her commission she responds to ‘Landscape in Lockdown’ with a contemplative film of her painting Glen Muick.

Aiming to counteract the lack of physical connection in lockdown, Siobhan captured a more intimate experience of landscape, closely filming the drawn and sewn lines of her canvases in a dreamscape-like installation. Filming this way evokes the textures and tangibility of the landscape in a more immersive way than photography. Another aspect of this film is the intention of slowing down, appreciating what’s around us. The audio of gently echoing footsteps transports the viewer to the hillside, and there is a feeling of growing proximity of the landscape and more freedom as lockdown comes closer to ending. The film cuts to hills just outside of Glasgow, and as the camera pans round we see the paintings unraveled from the installation, celebrated in the landscape.

Siobhan McLaughlin, Film still showing Landscape in Lockdown, oil bar and oil paint on mixed materials, © the artist

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Kate Banner, writer and curator at Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum. Kate’s commission is a thought-piece article discussing the response of their team to the postponement of their spring 2020 exhibition Skyscape - a touring exhibition from the Ashmolean. Faced with the closure of the galleries and physical separation, Kate and her team formed a social media group through which they shared weekly creative responses to artworks from the exhibition.

The piece reflects on the strength drawn from developing a new working relationship and friendship with colleagues during lockdown. Skyscape charts our changing relationship with the sky, and how artistic representations have evolved to reflect this. The sense of distance and space in the artworks (which include works by Durer, Turner and Nash) was all the more poignant and meaningful given restrictions, and offered a means by which the group could feel connected despite their distance. They found a new enjoyment and comfort in the Worcestershire skylines we all share. The thought piece includes images of the some of the responses created by the team, including poems, artworks, photographs and reflections.

Sue Rickhuss, Painting in response to Rembrandt’s Three Trees, included in the Skyscapes exhibition.

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ABOUT THE COVER IMAGE I first saw John Gibson’s Hylas Surprised by the Naiades during a trip to Tate Stores. At the time, I was halfway through the first year of my doctoral studies and had spent the last few months researching Gibson and looking closely at images of this marble group, and other works by the artist, on a laptop screen….

Confronting an object that you are familiar with only through photographs and the verbal perceptions of others can be exhilarating, but I think that we ought not to be ashamed to admit that it can sometimes be an anticlimactic experience.

What made mechanical, in particular photographic reproductions of art such a thrilling notion for Walter Benjamin was precisely their capacity to challenge the authority of the so-called original object, threatening what he described as its “unique existence” (einmaligen Vorkommens). Even in the aura-negating conditions of a storage site however, Hylas Surprised by the Naiades did not disappoint. It is a work whose physical presence struggles to be accommodated by the camera and grasped in two dimensions, even when captured from multiple points of view.

Immediately, the unusual pose of nymph to the left of Hylas struck me in a new way. Only by seeing the work in the flesh, as it were, did I perceive of the weight 27

of this nymph’s cheek against the top of Hylas’s head, the sense of her pressing down onto him in a gesture of quiet coercion. In addition to making them appear unequivocally older than the boy who—in the ancient myth re-told by several Greek authors—is the object of their desire, Gibson’s choice to make the two nymphs considerably taller than Hylas gives the group its distinctive outline: a soft, sepulchral triangle formed by the two enclosing female forms. The tip of this shape is sealed by the pressing action of the nymph’s cheek. Looking at the sculpture, this detail seemed to suggest that the nymph is smelling Hylas. The degree to which her head is tilted disengages her eyes from the central action of the scene, conjuring the way we tend to look away from an object when smelling it in order to activate our olfactory sense in full. While the nymph on the right makes direct contact with Hylas with her eyes and with her hand, her accomplice appears distracted, or rather focused elsewhere, transfixed by the scent of the boy’s hair. In Gibson’s writings, he himself rhapsodises more than once on the “ambrosial locks” of certain male figures from classical mythology.

Drawing on ways that perfumes have been both rigorously gendered and radically un-gendered, social anthropologist Mark Graham asks if “the olfactory is the queerest of the senses?” Unusual in classicising art let alone marble sculpture, the portrayal of one body smelling another is in accordance with the intense, layered queerness of Gibson’s sculpture, its theatrical staging of sexual deviance: bisexual, polyamorous, incestuous, paedophilic. Hylas himself was the lover of Heracles. Following the boy’s abduction by the nymphs during an overnight stop-over in Mysia (present-day Turkey), the divine hero is left heartbroken, branded a deserter and a coward by his shipmates aboard the Argo, which sets sail without him. While other British artists, including John William Waterhouse, adapted the myth in such a way as to reinscribe it with heteronormative values (as testified by the debate on the misogyny and objectification at play in Waterhouse’s picture at Manchester City Art Gallery in 2018 led by Sonia Boyce), Gibson embraces aspects of the story that render it an affront to such values, aspects that make it, in the words of bell hooks, “queer—past gay.” Even the amphora held by Hylas—a seemingly innocuous detail that permits us to identify the figure as the boy who went to fetch water for the Argonauts’ evening meal—becomes a sign of penetration. Brushing against his upper thigh, its hole connects to his fig leaf in a diagonal line.

Yet to me, the most striking thing about Gibson’s sculpture remains way in which such complexities are masked. Coupled with the rarefied status of all GrecoRoman literature, the “pure” connotations of the work’s obstinately classical form have a sanitising effect on this representation of unconventional desire, if not rape. A case in point: throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, a plaster version of the sculpture was displayed at Blackburne House, an all-girls school in Liverpool. Around the time Hylas Surprised by the Naiades was on view 28

at Bodies of Nature, the BP Spotlight Display I curated at Tate Britain, I myself had no qualms about teaching my 8-year-old neighbour about the sculpture after she was asked to present about a subject from Greek mythology as homework.

Her family did not own a computer and nobody was around to help, so we spent some time looking at images of the work and talking about nymphs. I wish she could have seen the real thing.

Cora Gilroy-Ware is Lecturer, History of Art at the University of York, and author of The Classical Body in Romantic Britain (Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art 2020). Her next book project looks at engagements with Greco-Roman form among artists of colour—particularly those of African and indigenous American descent—from the 19th century to the present day. In 2021 Cora will be joining the BAN Steering Group.

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OPPORTUNITIES AND INVITATIONS Invitation: Perspectives on non-traditional artists and the UK art world My name is Kate Davey and I am a PhD student at the University of Chichester. I am conducting interviews as part of my PhD research study looking at work created by artists who have taken a non-traditional route into the art world.

I am keen to speak to those who make decisions about exhibitions. I am interested in your perspectives on displaying and sharing work by artists who have not taken a traditional route into the art world. By this, I refer roughly to artists who may not have been to art school, artists who may experience mental or physical health issues, artists Steve Murison, My Dying Crow and My Empty Bottle who are neurodiverse, and artists who come (2015), oil on wood, 46 x 44 cm from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

Questions will touch upon issues like the diversity of artists and artwork in exhibitions and what makes a successful exhibition.

For more information, please email KDavey2@stu.chi.ac.uk

New Seminar Series - The World in a Historic House: Global Connections and Collections Selected as one of ten new Partnership Seminars hosted by the Institute for Historical Research, ‘The World in a Historic House: Global Connections and Collections’, will connect academics and heritage professionals working on the global and imperial dimensions of the historic house.

This seminar disrupts the conventional ‘treasure house’ narratives which have dominated historic house studies, and engages with the growing body of work that places these spaces in their global and imperial contexts.

With convening institutions from the Caribbean, UK and US, as well as heritage institutions with a domestic and global reach, speakers will link academic research to its practical application, drawing on emerging scholarship and case studies. The seminar will play an important part in shaping the public 30

understanding of colonial history.

The seminar will start soon and will be hosted entirely online. For further updates, follow the Seminar Twitter account: https://twitter.com/WHH_seminar

Curating Nation – call for contributions Over a series of three workshops (21 April, 28 April and 5 May 2021), Curating Nation will explore how existing narratives of British art might be expanded through curatorial and art historical interventions.

It is the first public event organised as part of the Curating Nation project conceived by Hammad Nasar at UAL’s, hosted by UAL Decolonising Arts Institute, and has been developed in collaboration with British Art Network’s Black British Art Research Group led by Alice Correia, Elizabeth Robles and Marlene Smith.

Coinciding with the opening of the British Art Show 9 in Wolverhampton (6 March – 30 May 2021), Curating Nation invites artists, curators and scholars to consider three primary strands of enquiry: 1.

2.

3.

How are national collections formed, and where do we encounter them?

What stories of nation do touring exhibitions circulate?

What is the role of international constituents, particularly in former colonies, in the co-production of British art histories?

By paying attention to the role of curatorial and institutional agency we aim to focus on the possibility for more expanded and diverse narratives of British art that account for current socio-political debates around ‘the nation’. The event asks what does the ‘national’ look like, and what roles can art, artists and arts organisations play in shaping national self-perceptions in the 21st century?

Confirmed participants include: Nick Aikens, curator, Van Abbemuseum; Emma Dexter, Director Visual Arts, British Council; Andrew Ellis, Director of Art UK; Ann Gallagher, Independent curator and former Director of Collections, British Art, Tate (2006-19); Roger Malbert, Curator, writer and former Head of Hayward Gallery Touring (2000-18); Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern; Marguerite Nugent, Manager, Arts & Culture, City of Wolverhampton Council Workshop I What does a national collection look like?

What happens when we shift constructions of British art away from Londoncentric institutions? Does Tate Britain then cease to be the national collection, 31

and becomes one of many? How might ‘regional’ collections reshape the narrative? What possibilities do digital and distributive models of collection and narrative building hold?

Workshop II What stories of British art travel?

We ask what versions of British art are exported internationally, and why? Closer to home, we consider how exhibitions such as the British Art Show are received in their various national/regional contexts. In this session we consider the role of national and international touring shows in the establishment and consolidation of a limited set of narratives of Britain, and British art.

Workshop III What narratives of British art are co-produced internationally?

What new perspectives on ‘British’ art and its histories are brought into focus when exhibitions and scholarship is generated from the outside? Accepting that British art histories are entangled with external, often ex-colonial or Commonwealth, histories, in this session we consider the impact and ramifications of opening ‘the national’ up to co-production.

Call for contributions We invite 15-minute contributions that address the key themes and ideas of each of our three sessions. These may be case studies, provocations, propositional positions or artistic interventions for future research or curatorial response.

We are particularly keen to encourage early career scholars, curators, and researchers to add their voices to these conversations. Your proposal should be not more than 250 words. Please also indicate which Workshop your contribution will address and provide your contact details.

Please submit your proposal by email (curatingnation@gmail.com) no later than 15 February, 2021.

Final entries will be reviewed by the symposium convenors: Dr Alice Correia, independent art historian Hammad Nasar, Principal Research Fellow, UAL; Senior Research Fellow, Paul Mellon Centre; Co-curator, British Art Show 9 Dr Elizabeth Robles, Lecturer in Contemporary Art, Department of History of Art, University of Bristol Marlene Smith, Artist and curator

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Scotland in Europe - Call for Papers National Galleries of Scotland/University of Edinburgh, Feb 25, 2022 Deadline: Apr 1, 2021 Scotland in Europe - Cultural Connections, 1939 to the Present Regional, national, and international Museum and Gallery collections and archives narrate and evidence the close links and relations in creative practices which connect Scotland with, and position it in relation to, European contexts.

Examples of this rich heritage of historical and contemporary cultural exchanges include National Galleries of Scotland’s Surrealism collections and archives, the Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham Trust, the histories and legacies of Glasgow’s 1990 European Year of Culture, festivals and biennales, Scottish participation in European cultural initiatives, art school travelling scholarships, cultural relations and diplomatic policies, and Scottish artists working in a variety of capacities in Europe, and European emigré artists working in Scotland. At a time of heightened political, social, and cultural questioning of national and international identities – including Scottish and European – these creative and cultural practices and exchanges reveal crucial insights into the interconnections, shared histories, and mergings of different cultural traditions and heritages. Awareness and understanding of these are crucial for art and cultural researchers, practitioners, and professionals to be able to respond to and productively develop dialogues around these significant political contexts.

Proposals are therefore sought for 20-minute presentations which address any aspects of these exchanges from a wide range of perspectives including (but not restricted to) art histories, pedagogies, cultural policies and industries, and art and curatorial practices.

Please send abstracts (200 words maximum) to Dr Gráinne Rice (National Galleries of Scotland, GRice@nationalgalleries.org) and Professor Patricia Allmer (University of Edinburgh, patricia.allmer@ed.ac.uk), by 1 April 2021.

This one-day conference, to be held on 25 February 2022, is a collaboration between the National Galleries of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh, and is supported by an Art Fund Curatorial Network grant. Presentations will be filmed, and a publication is planned.

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