Curating the Contemporary: Working with Art and Artists at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Speaker
Clare Harris, Amy Budd, Chris Dorsett, David Pratten, Marenka Thompson-Odlum, Chris Morton
Event date
Event time
11:00 - 15:30
Venue
Pitt Rivers Museum
South Parks Road
Oxford
OX1 3PP
Venue details

Entry via the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RW

Event type
Gallery tours / talks
Event cost
Free
Disabled access?
Yes
Booking required
Not required

Should 'contemporary art' be displayed in an ethnographic museum like the Pitt Rivers? Can a Victorian museum building, containing tens of thousands of objects from communities all over the world, be construed as a contemporary art space? How can working with contemporary art and artists reconfigure or even challenge the histories of a place like the Pitt Rivers Museum?

Join us for a day devoted to exploring these questions and thinking about how concepts and methods from the contemporary art world might be incorporated into museums of anthropology and vice versa.

We present a series of 20-minute pop-up talks by curators and academics who have worked with contemporary artists and artworks in the museum. Speakers will 'pop up' in various locations around the museum, often right next to the cases, temporary installations and exhibitions currently on display. Come along and be part of the conversation!

11.00 - 11.30 But is it ethnographic? Curating Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Art in the Pitt Rivers Museum (Chris Morton, Pitt Rivers Museum.)

11.45 - 12.45 Rustling the Archive: Curating Contemporary Art with the Pitt Rivers Museum (Amy Budd, Modern Art Oxford.)

12.30 - 13.00 Items Said to be Artworks (Chris Dorsett, Professor Emeritus, University of Newcastle.)

13.30 - 14.00 Curating the 'Unmasked' exhibition and Zina Saro-Wiwa-Wiwa's 'Bad Boys & Broken Hearts' installation. (David Pratten, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography.)

14.15 - 14.45 The Art of Storytelling: Re-thinking Museum interpretation through Contemporary Works (Marenka Thompson-Odlum, Pitt Rivers Museum.)

15.00 - 15.30 "The Objects Chose Me": Marina Abramovic at the Pitt Rivers Museum. (Clare Harris, Pitt Rivers Museum & School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography.)