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Museums as Intersectional Spaces for Artivist Solidarity

image of Museums as Intersectional Spaces for Artivist Solidarity

This chapter responds to the themes of pedagogical sensibilities and anticolonial museum work by exploring two separate, but intertwined art education projects (cases) carried out in collaboration between the Art Education Programme at Aalto University, the Finnish National Gallery's Ateneum Art Museum, the Amos Rex art museum, and individuals associated with local NGOs.

The chapter concludes with an emphasis on solidarity; to sensibly and ethically combat systemic discrimination supported and maintained by museums and countless educators despite of their personal and collective aims and ideals. The chapter challenges the prevailing binary divisions within museum knowledges and their inscribed hegemonic, hierarchical structures between people, objects and knowledges. As a critical stance, the authors present the need for anticolonial and co-constructed knowledges where authority is shared, and where critical knowledge as a discourse strives to move past normative ways to perceive, experience, articulate and contextualise museum objects. The notions of sensible, anticolonial museum also brings forth non-verbal, embodied knowledge and sensuous epistemic orientation: artivist solidarity.

Keywords: accountability ; allyship ; anticolonial museum work ; artivist solidarity ; audience engagement ; embodied knowledge ; grief ; intersectionality ; museum knowledge ; museum objects ; museum pedagogy ; process of un-doing ; queer pedagogy ; solidarity

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References

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  3. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. Feminism, and the subversion of identity. Routledge.
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     [Google Scholar]
  6. Choi, B. , Krauss, A. , & van der Heide, Y. (Eds.). (2018). Unlearning exercises: Art organizations as sites for unlearning. Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons & Valiz.
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  11. Janes, R. , & Sandell, R. (Eds.). (2019). Museum activism. Routledge.
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  12. Järvinen, J. (2020). Queering/reconceiving the museum project and queer pedagogical practices in museums’ audience work [Unpublished Master's thesis, Aalto University].
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  14. Lahusen, C. , & Grasso, M. (2018). Solidarity in Europe–European solidarity: An introduction. In C. Lahusen & M. Grasso (Eds.), Solidarity in Europe: Citizens’ responses in times of crisis (pp. 1–18). Palgrave Macmillan.
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  15. Laitinen, A. , & Pessi, A. B. (2010). Vaatiiko solidaarisuus auttamaan? Solidaarisuus suomalaisten auttamisteoissa ja–asenteissa. Janus, 18(2), 355–373.
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  17. Mouffe, C. (2013). Institutions as sites for agonistic intervention. In P. Gielen (Ed.), Institutional attitudes: Instituting art in a flat world. Valiz.
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  18. Ng, W. , Ware, S. M. , & Greenberg, A. (2017). Activating diversity and inclusion: A blueprint for museum educators as allies and change makers. Journal of Museum Education, 42, 142–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/10598650.2017.1306664
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  19. Nussbaum, M. C. (2012). Capabilities, entitlements, rights: Supplementation and critique. In T. Campbell (Ed.), Justice and the capabilities approach (pp. 173–188). Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  20. Procter, A. (2020). The whole picture. The colonial story of the art in our museums and why we need to talk about it. Cassell.
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  21. Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017). Matters of care. Speculative ethics in more than human worlds. University of Minnesota Press.35
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  22. Rossi, L.-M. (2015). Muuttuva sukupuoli. Seksuaalisuuden, luokan ja värin politiikkaa. Gaudeamus.
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  23. Rousell, D. , Hohti, R. , MacLure, M. , & Chalk, H. L. (2020). Blots on the Anthropocene: Micropolitical interventions with young people in a university museum. Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, 21(1), 27–40. https://doi.org/10.1177/153270862095
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  25. Smith, M. (Ed.). (2020). Decolonizing: The curriculum, the museum, and the mind. Vilnius Academy of Arts Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  26. Spivak, G. C. (2011). An aesthetic education in the era of globalization. Harvard University Press.
     [Google Scholar]
  27. Staniszewski, M. A. (1998). The power of display. A history of exhibition installations at the Museum of Modern Art. The MIT Press.
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  28. Suominen, A. , & Pusa, T. (Eds.). (2018). Feminism and queer in art education. Aalto ARTS Books.
     [Google Scholar]

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