 A new series of lectures beginning in July 2007, to be held at Symondsbury Manor on Thursdays at 8p.m. LECTURES on EVERYTHING will welcome: a philosopher, an art historian, a poet, a green activist, a journalist, a scientist or an astronomer. We aim to provoke and stimulate with a one hour lecture on a well researched subject close to the speaker’s preoccupations. Thereafter, libations being poured and passed around, the discussion is open. Occasionally the lectures will take the form of a dance performance or live classical music.
Should you be interested – and you should be - bring enthusiasm, friends, £5 and curiosity about EVERYTHING. Telephone: 01308 458 116
Email: eendymion@yahoo.com The first LECTURE on EVERYTHING, 5th JULY 2007, 8pm. Symondsbury Manor ‘what loneliness/ to be blind in broad daylight-/and deaf, what loneliness/ when the song’s in full swing’ The Construction of Meaning: Decision-Making Among Curators of Contemporary Art Sophia Krzys Acord
Department of Sociology & Philosophy
The University of Exeter Ever since the YBA (Young British Artist) phenomenon in UK contemporary art (dating back to the 1997 Sensations exhibition at the Royal Academy of the Arts), there has been a growing public debate about the ways in which public institutions choose to promote certain material artefacts as works of art. Indeed, today anything can be art. However, this doesn’t mean that everything can be. Instead, specific mediating individuals are increasingly important in making decisions about what constitutes art and what does not. These decisions inform public exhibitions and purchases by cultural heritage institutions (i.e. museums). In particular, curators, museum directors and cultural professionals play a dual role: acting as cultural creators (producing belief and value in specific artists and artworks), and acting as cultural managers (navigating issues of funding, censorship and public accountability). A main concern of the sociology of the arts is to understand the bases of social distinction and how these individuals construct the frames by which the public views their society. The creation of ‘official art’ requires ‘mythmaking’, but exactly how cultural professionals make these myths remains largely unexplored. By showing photographs of exhibition installations in public institutions of contemporary art in France and England, this presentation will discuss the ways in which curators plan exhibitions, choose works, write press releases and catalogues, and physically install the works in the exhibition space. The goal of this presentation is to go behind the scenes of the curator’s activities in order to understand how curators make distinctions between ‘art’ and ‘non-art’, and how the curators envision and configure the museum public. In doing so, this presentation will demonstrate that curators often base their decisions on contextual, personal and semi-conscious cues when shaping artistic value. What does this mean for the museum public? Is it possible to truly ‘democratize’ contemporary art?
(Sophia Krzys Acord is concluding her PhD in the sociology of the arts at the University of Exeter, where she works with Tia DeNora and Robert Witkin. She has arrived to sociology from a background in theatrical lighting design, applied drama, musical performance and arts education. Her past research projects include a 2-year ethnography of Parisian artist-squats and the study of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and public debate in the USA and UK. She is currently developing visual approaches to study tacit knowledge production and extra-verbalized practices of taste, decision-making, value attribution, meaning-making and performance among curators of contemporary art in England and France. For more information, see: www.projects.ex.ac.uk/socarts/sophia (M.Res. Sociology, University of Exeter, U.K.; B.A. Sociology & Anthropology and Interpretation Theory, Swarthmore College, USA).)
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