Imagining the social impact of museums and galleries: interrogating cultural policy through an empirical study

This paper aims to contribute to an understanding of how museums and galleries are regulated through an examination of the production and implementation of policy. It concentrates on those aspects that view them as vehicles through which social policy, such as that dealing with social inequality, can be implemented. To do this, it identifies the ways that motivations, behaviours and social outcomes of engagement are imagined by New Public Management-derived policy, and audit and evaluation tools. This is then examined using the results of a study of how visitors consume contemporary visual art galleries in north-east England, UK. The study concludes that the complex nature of engagement cannot be accommodated by policy in its present form and cannot be captured by existing audit and evaluation tools. It suggests that new approaches that acknowledge the roles visitors play in the construction of meanings need to be developed.     

A Review of “The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact,Theory, and Sign of Contradiction”

Abstract

Responding to Samuel Huntington's argument in Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, this article explores the problematic character of American national identity. While Huntington presents himself as trying to conserve a traditional American identity based on both political creed and Anglo-Protestant culture, I contend that America's founding political theory and its philosophic sources are ambiguous on the question of culture and national identity. The Declaration of Independence and the social contract theories that helped inform it seem to invite a kind of cosmopolitan commitment to a creedal identity while at the same time leaving open the possibility of a more exclusive cultural identity. In the end, this ambiguity works to undermine a public sense that the political order should try to conserve a particular culture, a tendency that is furthered by a democratic regime's natural inclinations toward universalism and egalitarianism. It seems, then, that the problem of the preservation of American cultural identity is rooted in the very culture that Huntington wishes to preserve.     

The Interaction of Body, Things and the Others in Constituting Feminine Identity in Lower Socio-Economic Ranks of Bam, Iran

Identity is one of the most important matters in social theory, especially in recent decades. Identity is a fluid phenomenon which forms in the process of every day activities. Individuals get practical knowledge of society to do intentional practices. They operate actively in identitizing process. Gender identity is one of important dimensions of individual identities constituting in social relations to others. Different socio-economic classes experience different social relations and engage in different identity processes. This research studies the formation process of feminine identity in the process of marriage (in contrast with the concept of virginity) in lower socio-economic classes of Bam. Body as site of identity and focus of close contact between agency and structure becomes the object of various changes and with creating difference-especially within group differences-distinguishes individuals from one another. Cultural materials is used intentionally in this process. The research is based on finds of “Bam Contemporary Archaeology Project: Excavation in Disastrous Layers”. Six collapsed houses ruined by 2003 earthquake have been excavated. Meshkani House which is represents low socio-economic class is the focus of research. The research take an archaeological approach (reconstructing behavioral patterns of individual and societies base on material culture) investigating gender structure and gender sociability processes in Bam, Iran. The sites being contemporary, has created an extended range of facts. In some cases for better understanding of the context, local people were interviewed .The information from “Disaster Ethno-archaeology Project of Bam” was also used in this study.     

The Istanbul Modern Art Museum: An Urban Regeneration Project?

Abstract

In the 2000s, contemporary art institutions have flourished in Istanbul. New museums (mostly private) and art galleries have been created; biennials and fairs of contemporary art have attracted a growing number of visitors. To what extent could this fostering of culture be linked with the “Bilbao effect”? To what extent are the promoters of these cultural investments betting on economic development and urban regeneration through these projects? Focusing on the Istanbul Modern Art Museum (IM), this article analyses the process of its creation and its potential impact on its environment. It argues that the development of culture investments in modern arts in Turkey is mainly due to the private initiatives of large industrial groups and the wealthiest families, most of the time with political support. More than the expected economic impact of cultural investments, the main reason for these public–private collaborations is the symbolic dimension that contemporary art provides to a country which strives to be perceived as modern, developed and European. From the IM to Istanbul European Capital of Culture 2010, cultural investments are a means of strengthening an international image in the context of the “membership” negotiations between “Turkey and the European Union”.     

The Little Nyonya and Singapore’s national self: reflections on aesthetics,ethnicity and postcolonial state formation

Singapore’s postcolonial state formation process has combined the appeal/distress of a multiracial society with the nationalistic pride of economic development. In recent years, the city-state has witnessed a revival of Peranakan culture and history, referring to the descendants of early Chinese immigrants who integrated into Indigenous societies before becoming prized mediators for British colonisers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We question how these references are strategically deployed as part of the process of postcolonial state formation and how their aesthetic representations support public discussions and debates about what defines contemporary (Chinese) Singaporean identity. By examining Peranakan representations in the television series The Little Nyonya from a Deleuzian perspective, it will be argued that Peranakan history and culture are mobilised to de-territorialise previous meanings of national ethnic markers, specifically Chineseness, and to re-territorialise a local sense of Indigeneity. In reaction to concerns over Mainlander identity, representations of Peranakan culture and history in The Little Nyonya support the indigenisation of a specific Chinese identity that is accessible to all Singaporeans, offering an aesthetic framework in which the ongoing process of negotiating between Singapore’s national self and other unfolds.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Steven Laurence Kaplan, Farewell, Revolution: Disputed Legacies, France, 1789/1989. Patrik Hall, The Social Construction of Nationalism: The Example of Sweden. Miranda Vickers, Between Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo. Miranda Vickers and James Pettifer, Albania: From Anarchy to a Balkan Identity. Hugh Poulton and Suha Taji-Farouki (eds.), Muslim Identity and the Balkan State. Ali Eminov, Turkish and other Muslim Minorities of Bulgaria. Bobby S. Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism. Tariq Modood and Pnina Werbner (eds.), The Politics of Multiculturalism in the New Europe: Racism, Identity und Community. Pnina Werbner and Tariq Modood (eds.), Debuting Cultural Hybridity: Multicultural Identities and the Politics of Anti-Racism. Anthony W. Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparative Analysis of the United States, South Africa and Brazil.     

The Form and Function of Poverty: Examining National Identity through Public Housing Architecture

Abstract

Lawrence J. Vale tells us that “grand symbolic state buildings need to be understood in terms of the political and cultural contexts that helped to bring them into being,” ¹ 1. Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (London: Routledge, 1992), 3. and that these buildings can help us understand our national identity. But all buildings are part of a broader political and cultural context. Even unimpressive state-funded buildings express meaning about the politics, power, and priorities of a nation. Because these buildings are not purposefully symbolic, their symbolism has the potential to provide a less contrived—though perhaps less appealing—portrayal of the nation in which they are built. Public housing provides an example of this idea. Public housing in the United States is latent with negative meanings that are reinforced and perpetuated by its architecture, siting, and design. This article examines three historical and iconic public housing communities and analyzes the meanings of these spaces through Goodman's four frames of reference—denotation, exemplification, metaphorical expression, and mediated reference—to determine what these spaces, as architecture, say about the American national identity and our relationship with public housing.     

Troubling Naturalism: Shirana Shahbazi's The Curve

This article performs a reading of Shirana Shahbazi's photo-based mural The Curve (2007), an artwork that interrogates the production of knowledge based on various ideas of truth in representation. The Curve meditates on knowledge production in relation to three sites: contemporary documentary photography, the history of northern European still-life painting, and the murals of religious leaders and martyrs that adorn Tehran. The effect of these multiple citations is the creation of an artwork that cannot be comfortably contextualized either in Western art history or in contemporary Iranian visual culture. The Curve thereby anticipates and attempts to block its own assimilation into art historical and critical discourses that reduce the work of Iranian artists to static reflections of a particular geographical and political reality. The artwork thus demands a consideration of the ways in which context, as a term in contemporary global art history, is ideologically constructed within a certain network of power relationships.     

Engaging with place: artists,site-specificity and the Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail

This paper traces the creative processes employed by artists participating in the 2004 Hebden Bridge Sculpture Trail and examines relationships between place, art and site-specificity. The Trail is a popular, temporary annual local arts event that invites international artists, students and community art groups to create and exhibit site-sensitive sculpture within Hardcastle Crags in Yorkshire, England. We consider some of the multiple ways in which artists mediate relationships between ‘site’ and artwork. We connect geographical concepts of place that highlight location, locale and sense of place, with mobile understandings of site as porous and flowing. The paper positions geographical research of art, opening out art and site in a non-urban environment through comparative discussion of concepts of ‘place’ and three ‘paradigms’ in site-specific art (phenomenological, social/institutional and discursive, Kwon 2002 Kwon, M. 2002. One Place After Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Three elements of site-specificity – histories, natures, interactions – are then explored through fourteen artists' creative practices and our documentation of the installation of their artwork in the Trail. We highlight the juxtaposition of ‘sites’ within the Trail, the over-lapping of ‘paradigms’ within individual artworks, and transitory aspects of ‘site’ to suggest that ‘time’ holds great significance in understanding site-specificity, place and art outdoors.     

“Art is a Sincere Martyrdom”: Circumventing Censorship by Encryption in the Work of Alireza Espahbod

This paper focuses on various aspects of Alireza Espahbod’s style of painting that encrypt his work. The period considered is from the just after the Iranian revolution until the artist’s death in 2007: in these years censorship had become severe, resulting in banning prohibition on his work being exhibited. Apart from the striking symbols that recur throughout his work, it is noticeable that he favors certain visual metaphors for encryption of humanitarian and satirical meanings. The discussion also focuses on the ways in which sequences of his individual paintings create narratives, like scenes in a play or a film. Unlike some preceding modernists, Espahbod is firmly rooted in his Iranian cultural milieu, and is in a line of artists who have used surrealism, beginning with Sadegh Hedayat in the modern literary world. He also follows a much older tradition that goes back to classical poetry and miniature art, in which image and word coalesce and are interchangeable, and where literature and visual art reflect one another. He uses these older techniques to comment allusively on the dramatic events and conditions of his own time. It is argued that his work amounts to more than that of an artist who merely fought against censorship, as his art rises above it and responds to it with a positive message for his audience.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Staffan Zetterholm (ed.), National Cultures and European Integration: Explanatory Essays on Cultural Diversity and Common Politics. Brian Jenkins and Spyros A. Sofos (eds.), Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe. Helma Lutz, Ann Phoenix and Nira Yuval-Davis (eds.), Crossfires: Nationalism, Racism and Gender in Europe. Jan Jindy Pettman, Worlding Women: A Feminist International Politics. Tracey Hill and William Hughes (eds.), Contemporary Writing & National Identity. Clare Mar-Molinero and Angel Smith (eds.), Nationalism and the Nation in the Iberian Peninsula: Competing and Conflicting Identities. Michael Newman. Democracy, Sovereignty and the European Union. Seamus Dunn and T. G. Fraser, with a Foreword by Dr Otto van Habsburg, Europe and Ethnicity: The First World War and contemporary ethnic conflict. Peter Lynch, Minority Nationalism and European Integration. Joseph Ruane and Jennifer Todd, The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland: Power, Conflict and Emancipation. Donald Clark and Robert Williamson (eds.), Self-Determination: International Perspectives. Milton J. Esman and Shibley Telhami (eds.), International Organisations and Ethnic Conflict. Williamson, Joel, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States. Subrata Mitra and Alison Lewis (eds.), Subnational Movements in South Asia.     

Second Laws,Two Cultures,and the Emergence of an Ecosystem Aesthetics

Abstract

The appropriation of scientific concepts by the humanities and the visual arts exemplifies what many feel are both the pitfalls and possibilities of interdisciplinary engagement. The principle of entropy, which C. P. Snow claimed could serve as a litmus test of the ‘two cultures’ divide, provides an excellent starting point for exploring how artists have employed scientific concepts far beyond their original contexts. As a case study in interdisciplinarity, the use of entropy in the visual arts is also a lens to consider the evolution of an artistic proposal from the 1960s known as ‘system aesthetics’. As an early challenge to the clean demarcation of art and science, system aesthetics was a precedent for what might be described as the emergence of an ecosystem aesthetics within contemporary art and design today.     

Views and Commentaries: Struggling with the Past: Some Views of African-American Identity

Identity has been, and remains, central to African-American struggles with inequalities in the United States. In this paper I address various portrayals of African-American identity, and consider how these views of the past articulated with contemporary struggles. These portrayals range both in time and authorship, and include the views of former slaves, black intellectuals, and archaeologists. Taken together, they reflect the dynamic nature of identity, as well as the shifting importance of Africa as a root of identity and source of strength in struggles, past and present.     

Claims to Place: The public art of Sue Jane Taylor

This paper explores the ways through which the public art of Scots artist Sue Jane Taylor and the practices associated with it both unsettle narratives of globalisation and conjure in their stead new narratives of place. With reference to the stories of five works/workings of art—Glencalvie and Borgie in the Highlands, Aberdeen (the onshore site for the North Sea oil industry) and Clydebank, and Lower Pultneytown, Wick—I show how the art, as evidence of a deeply politicised aesthetics, makes visible not only the specificities of historical and contemporary struggle, but is also bound up with creating and imagining new political possibilities. Art and artistic practices are understood not simply in terms of shaping meanings but as constitutive of processes of subject formation and of the ‘becoming’ of place.     

促进“认同”是当代博物馆的重要任务

"认同"是个人对自我社会身份的认知,与特定社会群体的关系及归属感,是当代社会发展重要的心理保障。文化遗产与特定群体的发展历程和发展需求紧密联系,在认同中起到催化和强化的作用。促进认同将对博物馆的收藏、研究、陈列、教育及观众服务等各项工作提出新的任务、带来新的活力。博物馆必须运用其收藏的文化遗产,揭示遗产蕴涵的多层面信息,帮助人们了解自己的发展历程,认清自身特点,强化自我认同。加强公众的民族认同、文化认同、社会认同和国家认同,是当代中国博物馆不容推卸的社会责任。     

Book Reviews

Books Reviewed: Caroline Walker Bynum, Metamorphosis and Identity Bridget Hill, Women Alone: Spinsters in England 1660–1850 Doreen Evenden, The Midwives of Seventeenth–Century London Tim Meldrum, Domestic Service and Gender 1660–1750: Life and Work in the London Household Naomi Tadmor, Family and Friends in Eighteenth–Century England: Household, Kinship and Patronage Nanora Sweet and Julie Melnyk (eds), Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century Kumkum Sangari, Politics of the Possible: Essays on Gender, History, Narratives, Colonial English Lisa Norling, Captain Ahab had a Wife: New England Women and the Whalefishery 1720–1870 Victoria E. Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men, Money and Politics in Paris, 1830–1870 Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Market: Envisioning Consumer Society in Fin–de–Siècle France Ina Zweiniger–Bargielowska, Austerity in Britain, Rationing, Controls, and Consumption 1939–1955 Ina Zweiniger–Bargielowska (ed.), Women in Twentieth Century Britain, Social, Cultural and Political Change Victoria Lorée Enders and Pamela Beth Radcliff (eds), Constructing Spanish Womanhood: Female Identity in Modern Spain Aurora G. Morcillo, True Catholic Womanhood: Gender Ideology in Franco’s Spain Linda McDowell, Gender, Identity and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies     

Leibniz on Diplomacy and Discernible Art

Abstract

This article discusses Leibniz’s unique blend of aesthetics and diplomacy. While his art extended diplomacy beyond the bounds of political realism, his diplomacy gave occasion to his art. His identity of indiscernibles (objects with the same properties are identical) inspired philosopher Arthur Danto to define contemporary art in terms of a qualitative perceptual division between the world and the Artworld (objects with the same properties may or may not be art). Although Leibniz would have disputed Danto’s bifurcated artistic perspective, Danto vindicates Leibniz’s major contribution to contemporary aesthetic philosophy by defending his belief in the moral foundation of art. Leibniz was not only one of the pre-eminent men of German letters of his time, he also excelled in diplomacy on behalf of the Hanoverian court. His international relations (IR) theory of peace through grand global alliances is only just beginning to be understood, though his aesthetics and correct diplomacy continue to validate individual creativity, liberal freedoms, and universal enlightenment up to this very day.     

A Tile Pavement from the Queen's Chamber,Clarendon Palace,Dated 1250-2

This article undertakes an object-focused study of a single work of art of great material and visual complexity: the Wallace Collection pax. This object stimulates an important discussion on how the making, materials and form of a work of art are fundamental to unravelling the object’s function and meaning for a contemporary audience. In placing at the core of the object a rare example of a late medieval amber Vera icon, the Wallace Collection pax also opens up a wider discussion on the nature and popularity of amber as a material of artistic expression in the later Middle Ages. In basing this article on the physical and material history of the work of art, I hope to illustrate the importance of going back to first principles when undertaking object-based research, and I intend to highlight the complex interaction between material and form in late medieval art.     

Performance and the politics of gender: transgender performance in contemporary Chinese films

This article focuses on two different genres of gender transitivity or impersonation. First, male actors who impersonate female characters. The two examples used to examine these impersonations are Chinese films Farewell My Concubine (Ba Wang Bie Ji 1993) and Forever Enthralled (Mei Lanfang 2009). Both films are based on the historical practice of dan in Peking Opera. Second, women who cross-dress as men for the sake of transgressing into the public sphere that had traditionally been forbidden for women. The main example of this is Hua Mulan (2009), a live action movie based on a Chinese legend of a female warrior called Hua Mulan, who disguises herself as a man to replace her father in the military service. Based on my close reading of the transgender performance in these Chinese films, the article will engage discussions of Western gender theories by Garber, Butler and Halberstam to examine the discourse and politics of gender and sexuality in contemporary China. To be more specific, a critical analysis will be carried out in the following three aspects: first, gender performativity is not necessarily subversive, but only suggests that heterosexual norms are arbitrary and unnatural. Second, rather than challenging heterosexism and gender binarism in contemporary China, the three films seem to support and consolidate the gender hierarchy. Thirdly, the category of transgender is intersected with art, identity and ideology in the specific social and historical settings. The contextualized analysis not only sheds new light on the implications of transgender in contemporary Chinese culture and politics but also questions the universalism of Western gender theories in cross-cultural contexts.     

Danto and the Pale of Aesthetics

Arthur Danto’s Transfiguration of the Commonplace is a new theory of art, seeking to catch the flavour and essence of its contemporary phenomenology. It is obliged, however, to pit itself in toto against aesthetic philosophy, leaning on the derivatives from deuteropraxis and institutional definition while committing itself to a concept of arthood extracted from exoteric ideas, which are held to comprise the artworks’ individuation and identity. This paper examines the principal notions in support of his contentions and contrasts them to the chief principles of aesthetic philosophy. In this juxtaposition, it transpires that conviction eludes Danto, as his suppression of aesthetic criteria yields unsuspected aporias from a disconjugate amalgam of inherence, ontology, epistemology and concept integration. Thus the leap from “mere real things” to the plateau of arthood is never accomplished, as it falters at the step where a perceiving subject has a stake in, and the power of authorisation, of this conception of art.