Caribbean Curatorship and National Identity

28 November - 3 December 2009
Accra Beach Hotel & Spa Hotel
Bridgetown
Barbados

The 21st MAC Annual General Meeting and Conference 2009 will take place from November 29 to December 02, 2009 in Barbados under the theme ‘Caribbean Curatorship and National Identity’. The program includes a walking tour of Bridgetown and an island tour.

The three symposia for the conference are formed around the themes of "Breaking the Silence", "Reconstructing/Deconstructing Identity: Place and Memory" and "Generational Shifts Within The Caribbean Diaspora". Caribbean Curatorship and National Identity is an examination of how history is interpreted and heritage is shaped by communal memory for audiences, old and new, local and foreign. The topic allows for a broad array of issues to be examined in intensive consultation through a regional symposium and master classes to be developed in conjunction with the Museums Association of the Caribbean (MAC), the National Art Gallery Committee (NAGC), the International Curators Forum (ICF) and the International Council of Museums (ICOM).

Speakers include: George Abungu, John Akomfrah, Florence Alexis, Julien Anfruns, Ewan Atkinson, David A Bailey, Adelaide Bannerman, Delia Barker, Lonnie Bunch, Janice Cheddie, Alissandra Cummins, Okwui Enwezor, Graeme Evelyn, Christine Eyene, Kevin Farmer, Tom Finkelpearl, Amareswar Galla, Therese Hadchity, Hans-Martin Hinz, Winston Kellman, Asif Khan, Peggy McGeary, Tumelo Mosaka, Keith Piper, Maureen Salmon, Leslie Taylor, Tom Trevor and W. Richard West Jr.

www.caribbeanmuseums.com/index.php?id=6,0,0,1,0,0

The ICF At The 11th International Istanbul Biennial

12 September 2009
Akbank Culture and Arts Centre
Istiklal Caddesi 14-18
34435 Beyoglu
Istanbul

In the opening week of the 11th Istanbul Biennial, ICF continues its collaboration with international curators through a symposium, as part of its AFTER IMAGE season, using the Biennial’s theme, What keeps Mankind Alive, as a contextual reference and starting point.

This was inspired by A journey Without Return, a book of poems by the celebrated Turkish writer and political figure Nazim Hikmet, using the poems’ themes of migration to look at the influence of Turkish migration on contemporary art. It explores the ‘Gastarbeiter’ programme and its effect in the UK, Germany and Turkey, through which Turkish workers were invited by Western European countries based on their need for economic development.

This process has given birth to complex, hybrid family structures as well as blurring the concepts of identity and nationality. It has redefined lifestyles, tastes and social relationships. In What keeps Mankind Alive the artists, many of whom are migrants themselves, highlight the personal experience, the realities and connections between migrant communities and places.

In an event hosted by Akbank Culture and Arts Centre, curators and artists of the exhibition – Adam Chodzko, Alice Sharp, Peter Cross, Denizhan Ozer and Zineb Sedira – will be in discussion with David A Bailey.

The programme of ICF is supported by the Arts Council of England.

The Venice Biennial / British Pavilion

AFTER IMAGE
6 JUNE 2009

This is the ICF’s inaugural dialogue in a series of events addressing platforms of production and exhibition of the moving image, that is to be continued at the Istanbul Biennial in September and during London Film Festival in October of 2009.

In celebration of the work of Steve McQueen the symposium will ask a distinguished panel to reflect on the ways in which the contemporary moving image has become radicalised as a medium of democratic artistic enquiry.

Steve McQueen will present a work in the British Pavilion which has already generated considerable international expectation. Will his exhibition reflect the desire of the Director of the 53rd International Art Exhibition, Daniel Birnbaum, to explore through Making Worlds, the production of ‘vision’ or the projection of a world seen and modeled through the work of art?

In particular we are interested in discussing how artists have engaged with the mainstream processes of production in cinema whilst retaining their aesthetic and political edge. Does this dialogue between cinema, gallery and digital platforms challenge the curator to find new ways to make the staging of vision memorable.

The focus of the discussion will be Steve McQueen and his work in the gallery and cinema.

With John Akomfrah, Clive Gillman, Teka Selman, Allison Thompson & Mark Waugh.

Supported by Arts Council England and Engage: the National Association for Gallery Education and The British Council.

Sharjah Biennial - Curator's Workshop

16th March - 20th March 2009
Shamsi House
Al-Shyuwaihiyeen
Sharjar
U.A.E.
www.sharjahbiennial.org/en/default.html

The Curator's Workshop took place in Sharjah, U.A.E., timed to coincide with Art Dubai and the Sharjah Biennial between Monday 16 March and Friday 20 March 2009.

The participants attended discussion groups and events for three days during that week.

The series of workshops focused on three key areas:
Commissioning artists and artworks – the process of commissioning artists and artworks from concept to realisation.
Building institutions – from building capital infrastructure to developing an organisation's intellectual capital.
Dialogue and exchange – the relationships between institutions and audiences, between the private and the 'public' sectors and between the national and international.

The programme was led by Gilane Tawadros and Mark Waugh with contributions from other international curators and arts professionals. Our group of Middle Eastern Curators was made possible with the support of the World Collections Fund.

Thelma Golden In Conversation With David A Bailey - Tate Britain

Post-Black Art Now, took place at the Tate Britain Auditorium.
In the late 1990s curator and writer Thelma Golden coined the controversial term 'post-black art' with friend and artist Glenn Ligon to refer to a post-civil rights generation of African-American artists whose work she believed could no longer be defined in terms of 'race'. In this lecture and discussion, Golden reflects on the status of the term 'post-black art' in the context of debates about the globalisation of the art of the African diaspora and current notions of cultural difference.

Suzanne Lampla - Association International Des Critiques D'art Section Caraibe Du Sud

Suzanne Lampla has written a description of the symposia, Black Diaspora Visual Arts at:
http://www.aica-sc.net/aica_en/aica_sc/actu/index.htm

Black Diaspora Visual Arts Symposia at The Frank Collymore Hall Bridgetown

Frank Collymore Hall
Central Bank Of Barbados
Spry Street
Bridgetown
Barbados
www.fch.org.bb/fch/index.shtml

This conference is part of a series a series of symposia and exhibitions that explore visual art in the Black Diaspora.

It was a major collaboration with the National Art Gallery Committee in Barbados, AICA Southern Caribbean and the Arts Council of England.

The conference took as its starting point Stuart Hall and the question he poses in his essay “Modernity and its Others: Three Moments in the Post – War History of the Black Diaspora Arts”. The essay offers an analysis of three ‘moments’ in the post-war black visual arts in the UK.

The main contrast identified is between the ‘problem space’ of the artists–the last ‘colonials’–who came to London after World War II to join the modern avant-garde and who were anti-colonial, cosmopolitan and modernist in outlook, and that of the second generation–the first ‘post-colonials’–who were born in Britain, pioneered the Black Art Movement and the creative explosion of the 1980s, and who were anti-racist, culturally relativist and identity-driven.

In the work of the former, abstraction predominated; the work of the latter was politically polemical and collage-based, subsequently embracing the figural and the more subjective strategy of ‘putting the self in the frame’.

This generational shift is mapped here in relation to wider socio-political and cultural developments, including the growth of indigenous racism, the new social movements, especially anti-racist, feminist and identity politics, and the theoretical ‘revolutions’ associated with them.

The contemporary moment–less politicized, and artistically neo- conceptual, multi-media and installation-based–is discussed more briefly.

The symposium explored some of these themes in Hall’s paper with particular reference to their applicability to the contemporary Caribbean context and the relationship of the contemporary moment to earlier developments.

Questions include:
❍ Is there a Caribbean canon?
❍ Can we discuss a Caribbean aesthetic in the 21st century?
❍ What are the institutional models?
❍ How do we identify the different ways forward?


The Symposia took place at the Frank Collymore Hall in Bridgetown in conjunction with a number of site-specific artists’ projects.

The National Art Gallery Committee Barbados was established for the benefit of all. With a commitment to free admission, a central and accessible site, and extended opening hours, the gallery has ensured that its collection can be enjoyed by the widest public possible, and not become the exclusive preserve of the privileged. The committee continues to pursue a vigorous and socially inclusive outreach programme and caters for the needs of all groups in society.

Speakers and Artsists included:
Alissandra Cummings (Chairperson National Art Gallery Committee, Director Barbados Museum) Steve Blackett (Minister Of Community Development And Culture, Barbados) David Scott (Columbia University; Editor Small Axe) David A. Bailey (MBE, Senior Curator Autograph) Stuart Hall (Cultural Theorist, Professor Emeritus, Open University, London) George Lamming (Professor Brown University) Lowery Sims (Museum Of Arts and design, New York) Veerle Poupeye (Edna Manley College Of Visual And performing Arts) Krista Thompson (Northwestern University, Illinois) Leon Wainwright (Manchester Metropolitan University) Allison Thompson (National Art Gallery Committee) Kara Walker (Artist) Teka Selman (Branch Gallery, North Carolina) Richard Powell (Duke University, North Carolina) Dominique Brebion (President, AICA Southern Caribbean) Christopher Cozier (Artist) Paul Domela (Programme Director, Liverpool Biennial) Andrea Wells (National Art Gallery Committe, NCF) Alfredo Jaar (Artist) Ewan Atkinson (Artist) Ingrid Persaud (Artist) Arthur Edwards (Artist) Frances Ross (Artist) Indrani Gall (Artist) Joscelyn Gardner (Artist) Caroline Holder (Artist) Trevor Mathison (Artist) Gary Stewart (Artist) Ingrid Pollard (Artist) Sheena Rose (Artist)