Annual conference: “Re-Writing the Canon?”

Join us for the CAS annual conference, bringing together scholars, curators and museum professionals to consider significant recent initiatives in collecting, exhibitions and display, and the issues they raise.

In recent decades, notions of a fixed “canon”, or a single narrative in modern and contemporary art has come under question from all sides. Museums and galleries have been at the centre of the debate, playing an active part in revising art history. Modern art as a story of national histories and defined stylistic movements has come under scrutiny, with international museums adopting global, post‐colonial and supra‐national perspectives ranging far beyond the traditional Western‐centric model. Boundaries and hierarchies of value between different art forms have been dismantled. Issues of identity and representation have come to the fore, and renewed attention is being paid to museums’ responsibilities to their local communities.

How can museums keep pace and respond to these new imperatives? What happens when ‘the grand narratives’ are no longer considered fit for purpose? How are collections, exhibitions and displays to be rethought – according to what criteria, and for whom?

Speakers include:
Christopher Bedford, Director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, USA.
Dr Sook-Kyung Lee, Senior Curator, International Art at Tate Modern
EJ Scott, Curator of the Museum of Transology, currently hosted by the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery. 
Denise Murrell, co-curator of Black models: from Géricault to Matisse at Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Heike Munder, Director of the Migros Museum of Contemporary Art, Zurich.

Tickets

This event is organised by the Contemporary Art Society in partnership with The Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum.