Shakespeare's Restless World - BBC Radio series

“In a 20-part series to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4, Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum, looks at the world through the eyes of Shakespeare’s audience by exploring objects from that turbulent period.

“Neil uses objects to explore the great issues of the day that preoccupied the public and helped shape the works and considers what they can reveal about the concerns and beliefs of Shakespearean England. Contributing to the programmes will be Shakespeare scholars, historians and experts on witchcraft and warfare, fencing and food, luxury trade and many other topics. They discuss the issues these objects raise – everything from exploration and discovery to violence, entertainment and the plague.”

Wimbledon 2011: History of the Wimbledon queue

A new exhibition to celebrate 125 years of the championships looks at the tradition of The Queue at Wimbledon.

New Museum of Liverpool: Behind the scenes picture of the new exhibitions taking shape

Words can simply not describe how excited I am about the new Museum!

Smithsonian puts LGBT people in the picture

projectqueer:

Queers know not only the truth of this cliché, but that we’re usually out of the picture.  Historically (even often now) openly queer subjects have seldom been found in class pictures, family photo albums — let alone in portraits on museum walls.

Thankfully, we’re becoming part of the picture. A new exhibition “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, containing 100 works from the late 19th century until today, is the first major museum exhibit of same-sex portraits. At a cultural moment when same-sex marriage and gender identity are the cutting edge issues of the day, the exhibit couldn’t be more timely.

Growing up, like many of us, I rarely saw pictures of people like myself — in the domain of the personal or in the realm of art. As a teen who liked girls but didn’t dare tell anyone, I didn’t view photos of girlfriends holding hands in my high school yearbook. I loved looking at paintings and reading about the lesbian scene in Paris in the early 20th century, yet I discovered no photographs of lesbian salons on my visits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

If we don’t see images of people like ourselves in art, it’s hard for us to look within ourselves — to know who we truly are — to discover our historical context. If we’re not in the picture, we wonder, “Why aren’t we there? Shouldn’t we be straight like that boy and girl holding hands in that painting?”

“Portraiture … permits us to enter into the lives of others and explore how identities were forged in the past in ways that connect with our own search for meaning,” says a brochure for the “Hide/Seek” exhibit. “By looking at others across the course of history, we ultimately end up looking at ourselves through portraiture.”

It’s thrilling to view the many, varied, stirring portraits of “Hide/Seek,” as I did one recent afternoon. Perusing the work of well-known gay artists such as Andy Warhol, closeted queer artists such as photographer Carl Van Vechten, Romaine Brooks and other lesbian painters, and straight artists, including, Andrew Wyeth (whose 1979 portrait “The Clearing” of a young blonde-haired hunk will make any gay male’s mouth water), I realized we present-day queers are part of an historical context, our history has helped shape our art, and art has helped shape us.

Until recently, LGBTQ people have had to be largely closeted. Even now, though things have greatly improved in parts of the United States and other countries, many of us still encounter many forms of homophobia from hate crimes to same-sex marriage bans to employment discrimination to anti-gay “jokes.” As a result of this prejudice, queer artists, like other queers, historically have been outsiders. They’ve had to be closeted in their work — to allude to same-sex subjects in code.

“Much of the work in this exhibition necessarily trades in subtext, indirection and code, artifacts of a time when sexual difference was actively policed & prosecuted,” wrote Jonathan D. Katz, co-curator of “Hide/Seek, “ in an e-mail to the Blade. “Learning to survive under this regime meant learning codes, ways of signaling sexuality that, very often, entailed talking out of both sides of one’s mouth, addressing different languages to queer and non-queer populations at the same time.”

One of the more striking examples of this in “Hide/Seek” is a Carl Van Vechten photo of choreographer Antony Taylor and his partner (and dance protégée) Hugh Laing. I had to look twice before realizing they were lovers.

Another example of coded same-sex imagery in the exhibit is a 1914 ad. In it are two men, advertising Arrow shirts. Only at second glance, do you get that they’re queer.

“Those who see themselves as outsiders often have the most informed perspective on the language of power — for it is a matter of survival,” Katz, director of the visual studies doctoral program at the State University of New York at Buffalo, added in his e-mail.

In 1989, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, bowing to political pressure, canceled a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective. Today, our “outsider,” queer perspective is so welcomed that our art is on view in our nation’s capital.

The “Hide/Seek” exhibit runs through Feb. 13 at the National Portrait Gallery. Go here for more information.

View Source at Washington Blade – Gay News

Why Ancient Remains are a Bone of Contention

Should museums deal with human remains more sensitively?

This seems to be a case of making news out of a debate that has been rumbling along for some time now. But I made my comment at the bottom, for what it’s worth.

The question of museums acknowleding that there are sensitivites around the display of human remains goes hand-in-hand with the recognition that there is no one way of seeing history and the people and artefacts used to display it.

Museums work much more nowadays with source communitites and respecting their traditions is just one way of offering an exchange and fostering cooperation, rather than just taking knowledge and running with it.

Museums are custodians, not owners.

Anyone have any further thoughts on the matter?

Pop stars as curators

musing-museums:

The word ‘curator’ and the role of being a curator is thrown about so much that anyone can be one. Case in point: The Scissor Sisters curating a show on Mapplethorpe.

Do you think people who don’t have training in art, art history, and design should be considered curators?

I think this is an interesting question, and one which has seen much discussion in the last months. My first reaction is a predictable one: I worked hard, studied hard, took a year out of my life and have been plugging away at trying to break into this scene to no avail (damnit!!!), why should they just be able to waltz in and do my dream job when they are already doing theirs?

But if I take a few deep breaths and try and put my particular position in life to one side, then the answer does change. I don’t like the idea of only an elite few being allowed to say what people see and how we see it. I don’t think it’s helpful for people with the same experiences to be curating shows either. And I am a big advocate of involving source communities on more than a consultation level - give people the tools and opportunity to determine the aspects and perspectives they deem important. But I would argue that this has to be done within a framework of guidance and support from professionals, people who are there to see the bigger picture and that the finished product is representative of the museum’s mission.

Perhaps using celebrities is another way to get the crowds in: free publicity and a hardcore fan base (Although Mapplethorpe is not exactly family viewing). But let’s not lose perspective either, the Scissor Sisters are undoubtedly creative people. It’s not like letting Paris Hilton curate a fashion exhibition at the V&A (Lazy comparison I know, but it fits). Also, they have a definite link to Mapplethorpe’s work. Their album Night Work had a Mapplethorpe photo as the cover artwork and all singles taken from the album too.

Maybe all curators and wannabe curators would be able to rest easy if some honorary title were to be bestowed, rather than diluting our beloved “curator”? I don’t think that it’s a case of being elitist or snobbish, rather, people have worked hard and are reluctant to have their job title de-professionalised or their qualifications ignored.