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- Volume 8, Issue 2, 2019
Journal of Curatorial Studies - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2019
Volume 8, Issue 2, 2019
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Restaging Feminism: The Activist Retrospective
More LessAbstractIn the context of retrospective exhibitions, feminist restaging signifies a performative 'redoing' in a circuit of repetition that re-envisions, reinvents and remakes the discriminatory absences in history. In this article, the activism of restaging will be explored through the curatorial methods employed to memorialize Ana Mendieta's artistic legacy. Feminist strategies differ from the norms of canonical practices used in traditional career retrospectives, such as those for Mendieta's husband, Carl Andre. In another example of restaging, the 2011 re-presentation of Judy Chicago's works in Setting the Table created the opportunity to exhibit simultaneously Margarita Cabrera's sewing project in collaboration with Mexican artists. Restaging inaugurates the past and present of feminist collectivities, establishing a transnational activist model for repeat exhibitions.
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Aesthetic Dynamics, Inc. Presents: Afro-American Images 1971
More LessAbstractIn February 1971, the artist collective Aesthetic Dynamics, Inc. presented its first major undertaking: an exhibition of over 130 works of art by 66 artists. Organized as a memorial to the late James A. Porter, Afro-American Images 1971 was presented at the National Guard Armory in Wilmington, Delaware. Many of the artists who participated in the show were well-established nationally; however, the location and inclusion of many artists known only to the local community resulted in the marginalization of this significant exhibition. In 2021, the Delaware Art Museum will restage the exhibition as a collaborative curatorial partnership with past and currents members of Aesthetic Dynamics, Inc. in an effort to counter this historical amnesia. Restaging as a curatorial methodology is a constructive means through which to aid in the recovery of the 1971 project, its archival record and its significance locally and nationally.
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Riffing the Canon: The Pictures Generation and Racial Bias
By Riva SymkoAbstractThis article considers exhibitions as archival documents, and conceives of the restaging of exhibitions as an act of appropriating the archive. It examines The Pictures Generation 1974–1984 (2009), curated by Douglas Eklund as a restaged 'riff' on Pictures (1977), curated by Douglas Crimp. Pictures was a focused meditation on the historical significance of a particular aesthetic strategy. The Pictures Generation historicized Pictures as the foundational moment of appropriation. Eklund's form of restaging, however, reinforced the racially segregated realities that have marginalized the history of appropriative practices by artists of colour. Drawing on a post+colonial framework, I consider how exhibition restagings may be leveraged as a curatorial strategy of historical rupture.
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Restaging Origin, Restaging Difference: Restaging Harald Szeemann's Work
More LessAbstractThe most common form of restaging is that of the retrospective exhibition, for it can be used to provide a platform for the museum to reaffirm the original exhibition and in turn reaffirm itself as host. For Harald Szeemann, the role of the curator was that of a mediator who, through the exhibition, should attempt to halt the abovementioned closed-circuit of affirmations by questioning existing boundaries and canons. His own work, however, has been repeatedly restaged in recent years. This article focuses on two restagings: the Prada Foundation's When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013 (2013) and the Getty Research Institute's Harald Szeemann: Museum of Obsessions (2018). I argue that restaged exhibitions can take two different forms: they can be focused on revising traditional canons and hierarchies, or they can serve to reaffirm the exhibition and the hosting institution. The two forms are interdependent, however, and most restagings contain a mixture of the two.
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