Calling All Eccentrics
November 13 at 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM
What motivates collecting, and who decides what is worth preserving? Explore multiple, creative perspectives on the work of museum collecting, past and present, with emerging scholars and keynote speaker Mark Dion.
The symposium is a full-day program.
$15 Members | $20 Non-Members | College Students Free | Free Virtual
Schedule
9:15-9:30: Coffee
9:30: Welcome
9:40: & Antiquarian; David Wood, Curator
Session 1: (RE)EXAMINING CURATORIAL PRACTICES
How should editorial oversight be defined in museums? How can display techniques reinforce or dissipate stereotypical histories?
Olivia Kormos, Bard Graduate Center: “Have you ever wanted to be Savage?”: Indigenizing Museum Display in New Red Order: Feel at Home Here
Anne Lofgren, Art History MA Candidate at Tufts University :”Censoring the Private & Pubic: Anders Zorn’s Morning Toilet at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum”
11:00: BREAK
Session 2: HOW TO DEFINE CREATION
Is cultural heritage preserved or recreated in museums? What transforms a grouping of objects into a museum? What value is created by our adding a narrative to an object?
Olena Khiznychenko, Middlesex School, Ukraine Global Scholars: “What do we carry? Ukrainian culture, Memory, and Objects we keep”
Minnie Lerner, Candidate, Bachelor of Arts in Art History, Williams College: “Astronomy’s Accidental Archive: From Collection to Museum at America’s Oldest Observatory”
Anna Abhau Elliott, Desiree Moore, Robin Schwartzman, “Barter Boat”
12:30 LUNCH & OPEN TIME TO VISIT THE GALLERIES
Session 3: LOOKING BEYOND THE PHYSICAL OBJECT
How do the concepts of proximity, assemblage, and accumulation impact an object’s meaning? When does trying to define a thing negatively impact its owner or maker?
Ellen Dubreuil, Tufts University, MA in Museum Education: “Museum as Metaphor: The Dream-life of Collections”
Joshua Massey, PhD Candidate, Bard Graduate Center: “The Collector as Cultural Anthropologist: Defining and Divining the Black Landscape”
Livy Scott, PhD student in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art at MIT: “Inherited Things, Curated Interiors: Provenance, Place, and Interpretation of Collections at a Historic House Museum”
3:00: Keynote Address, Mark Dion
4:00: Concluding Remarks, Christie Jackson, Curator & Director of Exhibitions
