Queer, Decolonial and Indigenising Curatorial Frameworks: Renegotiating Institutional Authority in the Museum
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
This talk examines how museum interpretation, long synonymous with institutional authority, is being reshaped by key curatorial frameworks of the present: namely queer, decolonial and indigenising research and practice within the context of major Australian and UK museums. Through close textual analysis of wall texts from four exhibitions within the last decade – Queer British Art (Tate Britain, 2017), QUEER: Stories from the NGV Collection (National Gallery of Victoria, 2022), The Past is Now: Birmingham and the British Empire (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2017) and Unsettled (Australian Museum, 2021) – this research underscores the significance of subjectivity, plurality and transparency in interpretation. Positioning the museum exhibition as a site of encounter with ambiguity and difference, the talk argues that such examples of textual interpretation do not attempt to resolve ambiguity and tension, but rather to realise them in the exhibition space, not simply re-producing institutional authority but inviting contention with it. Reading these cases across two national contexts, the talk proposes a framework for museum text as a culturally consequential form and asks what current curatorial frameworks reveal about how the UK and Australia are encountering contested histories and renegotiating institutional authority.
Speaker: Dr Lilian Cameron is a Senior Interdisciplinary Lecturer in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Discipline of Art History at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on contemporary developments in curating and inclusive approaches to learning and interpretation in art museums. She is the author of Curating Art Now (Lund Humphries, 2022) and of articles, reviews and book chapters on contemporary curating, museum education and curatorial pedagogies. She has held roles as Lecturer, Museum and Heritage Studies, University of Sydney and Course Leader: Curating Museums and Galleries, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London. She has also worked in education and curatorial roles at Tate and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia.
Contact name: Sarah Thomas
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