Cosmopolitan Ambassadors: International exhibitions, cultural diplomacy and the polycentral museum

Lee Davidson, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and Leticia Pérez-Castellanos, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico

Winner of the 2020 Miguel Covarrubias Prize to the best research work How are museums working internationally through exhibitions? What motivates this work? What are the benefits and challenges? What factors contribute to success? What impact does this work have for audiences and other stakeholders? What contributions are they making to cultural diplomacy, intercultural dialogue and understanding? Cosmopolitan Ambassadors first considers the current state of knowledge about international exhibitions and proposes an interdisciplinary analytical framework encompassing museum studies, visitor studies, cultural diplomacy and international cultural relations, cosmopolitanism and intercultural studies. It then presents a comprehensive empirical analysis of an exhibition exchange involving two exhibitions that crossed five countries and three continents, connecting six high profile cultural institutions and spanning almost a decade from initial conception to completion. A detailed comparison of both the intercultural production of international exhibitions by museum partnerships and by the interpretive acts and meaning-making of visitors, reveals the many complexities, challenges, tensions and rewards of international exhibitions and their intersection with cultural diplomacy. Key themes include the realities of international collaboration, its purposes, processes and challenges; the politics of cultural (self-)representation and Indigenous museology; implications for exhibition design, interpretation, and marketing; intercultural competency and museum practice; audience reception and meaning-making; cultural diplomacy in practice and perceptions of its value. This first-ever empirically-grounded, theoretical analysis provides the basis of a new model of museums as polycentral: as places that might produce a kaleidoscopic vision of multiple centres and help to dissolve cultural boundaries by encouraging dialogue, negotiation and the search for intercultural understandings. Guidelines for practice include recommendations for successful international museum partnerships, exhibition development and maximizing the potential of museum diplomacy.

The Art of Cultural Exchange

Translation and Transformation between the UK and Brazil (2012-2016)

Edited by Paul Heritage, Queen Mary University of London, UK and Ilana Strozenberg, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil

Can cultural exchange be understood as a mutual act of translation? Or are elements of a country’s cultural identity inevitably lost in the act of exchange? Brazil and Great Britain, although unlikely collaborators, have shared an artistic dialogue that can be traced back some 500 years. This publication, arising from the namesake research project funded by the United Kingdom’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, seeks to understand and raise awareness of the present practices of cultural exchange between Brazil and Great Britain in relation to their historical legacy. Presenting five case studies and eight position papers, this research-based project investigates how artists interpret, transmit and circulate ideas, ideologies and forms of knowledge with specific reference to the production of new ‘translations’ produced from and, where possible, between peripheral territories. Written in accessible language, the case studies describe the experience of artists, managers and cultural leaders dealing with important challenges in the creative sector regarding the translation of creative and learning arts methodologies. Projects investigated are at the forefront of social arts collaborative practice, representing internationally influential initiatives that have had a demonstrable impact not only in urban centres and peripheries but also in isolated areas of central Brazil and the north of England. The position papers commissioned by the research from Brazilian and British academics and cultural leaders provide a remarkable variety of social, political, anthropological, historic and artistic perspectives of cultural exchange projects offering valuable experiences for those working in research, policy and for creative practitioners.

Arts in the Margins of World Encounters

Edited by Willemijn de Jong, University of Zurich, Switzerland et al.

'Arts in the Margins of World Encounters' presents original contributions that deal with artworks of differently marginalized people—such as ethnic minorities, refugees, immigrants, disabled people, and descendants of slaves—, a wide variety of art forms—like clay figures, textile, paintings, poems, museum exhibits and theatre performances—, and original data based on committed, long-term fieldwork and/or archival research in Brazil, Martinique, Rwanda, India, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. The volume develops theoretical approaches inspired by innovative theorists and is based on currently debated analytical categories including the ethnographic turn in contemporary art, polycentric aesthetics, and aesthetic cannibalization, among others. This collection also incorporates fascinating and intriguing contemporary cases, but with solid theoretical arguments and grounds. 'Arts in the Margins of World Encounters' will appeal to students at all levels, scholars, and practitioners in arts, aesthetics, anthropology, social inequality, and discrimination, as well as researchers in other fields, including post-colonialism and cultural organizations.

Cinematosophical Introduction to the Theory of Archaeology

Understanding Archaeology Through Cinema, Philosophy, Literature and some Incongruous Extremes

Aleksander Dzbyński, University of Zurich, Switzerland

What is archaeology? A research field dealing with monuments? A science? A branch of philosophy? Dzbyński suggests the simple but thoughtful equation: Archaeology = History = Knowledge. This book consists of 8 chapters presenting a collection of characteristic philosophical attitudes important for archaeology. It discusses the historicity of archaeological sources, the source of the algorithmic approach in archaeological reasoning, and the accuracy of logical and irrational thinking. In general, this book is concerned with the history of archaeologists’ search for a suitable methodology. All these issues are discussed in relation to two main intellectual trends of archaeology to the present day: processual and post-processual archaeology. Processualism introduced and developed the idea of algorithmic and universal reasoning in archaeology, while post-processualism focused attention on the individual value of a monument and the archaeologist himself. These are still two foundations on which the present knowledge of the past is based, and thus their defining role cannot be overestimated. An additional layer of narrative, visible right from the beginning of the book, is the gradual discovery of the relationship between archaeology and popular culture, especially film and literature. Its aim is both illustration and explanation. It is intended that the reader receives not only information and knowledge, but also a deeper emotional reference which is connected with the reception of works of art.

Embajadoras cosmopolitas. Exposiciones internacionales, diplomacia cultural y el museo policentral

Lee Davidson, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and Leticia Pérez-Castellanos, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico

Ganador del Premio Miguel Covarrubias 2020 al mejor trabajo de investigación ¿Cómo trabajan los museos internacionalmente a través de las exposiciones? ¿Qué motiva este trabajo? ¿Cuáles son los beneficios y retos? ¿Qué factores contribuyen al éxito? ¿Qué impacto tiene este trabajo en los públicos y otros agentes interesados? ¿Qué aportaciones están haciendo a la diplomacia cultural, al entendimiento y al diálogo intercultural? El libro Embajadoras cosmopolitas considera el estado del conocimiento actual sobre las exposiciones internacionales y propone un marco analítico interdisciplinario que incluye a los estudios de museos, de públicos, la diplomacia cultural, así como los estudios interculturales y sobre cosmopolitismo. A partir de este marco analítico, presenta un estudio empírico a detalle acerca de un intercambio expositivo con duración de casi una década, desde su concepción inicial hasta su término, el cual incluyó la presentación de dos exposiciones en cinco países y tres continentes, conectando a seis instituciones culturales de alto perfil. La detallada comparación, tanto de la producción cultural de las exposiciones internacionales (a través de las colaboraciones) como de los actos interpretativos de creación de significados de los visitantes, revela las complejidades, retos, tensiones y recompensas de las exposiciones internacionales y su intersección con la diplomacia cultural. Los temas clave incluyen: la situación real de las colaboraciones internacionales, sus propósitos, procesos y retos; las políticas de la representación (y auto representación) cultural y de la museología indígena, las implicaciones para el diseño de las exposiciones, la interpretación y su mercadotecnia; las competencias interculturales y las prácticas en los museos, la recepción en los públicos y la creación de sentidos, la diplomacia cultural en la práctica y las percepciones sobre su valor. Este análisis teórico con base empírica, el primero en su tipo, provee las bases para un nuevo modelo de museos policéntricos: espacios con potencial para producir una visión caleidoscópica de centros múltiples y para ayudar a disolver los límites culturales, promoviendo el diálogo, la negociación y la búsqueda de la comprensión entre culturas. Embajadoras cosmopolitas también ofrece orientación para las tareas cotidianas en los museos, incluyendo recomendaciones para colaboraciones exitosas a nivel internacional, el desarrollo de exposiciones y la maximización del potencial de la diplomacia cultural.

Embajadoras cosmopolitas. Exposiciones internacionales, diplomacia cultural y el museo policentral

Lee Davidson, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand and Leticia Pérez-Castellanos, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico

Ganador del Premio Miguel Covarrubias 2020 al mejor trabajo de investigación ¿Cómo trabajan los museos internacionalmente a través de las exposiciones? ¿Qué motiva este trabajo? ¿Cuáles son los beneficios y retos? ¿Qué factores contribuyen al éxito? ¿Qué impacto tiene este trabajo en los públicos y otros agentes interesados? ¿Qué aportaciones están haciendo a la diplomacia cultural, al entendimiento y al diálogo intercultural? El libro Embajadoras cosmopolitas considera el estado del conocimiento actual sobre las exposiciones internacionales y propone un marco analítico interdisciplinario que incluye a los estudios de museos, de públicos, la diplomacia cultural, así como los estudios interculturales y sobre cosmopolitismo. A partir de este marco analítico, presenta un estudio empírico a detalle acerca de un intercambio expositivo con duración de casi una década, desde su concepción inicial hasta su término, el cual incluyó la presentación de dos exposiciones en cinco países y tres continentes, conectando a seis instituciones culturales de alto perfil. La detallada comparación, tanto de la producción cultural de las exposiciones internacionales (a través de las colaboraciones) como de los actos interpretativos de creación de significados de los visitantes, revela las complejidades, retos, tensiones y recompensas de las exposiciones internacionales y su intersección con la diplomacia cultural. Los temas clave incluyen: la situación real de las colaboraciones internacionales, sus propósitos, procesos y retos; las políticas de la representación (y auto representación) cultural y de la museología indígena, las implicaciones para el diseño de las exposiciones, la interpretación y su mercadotecnia; las competencias interculturales y las prácticas en los museos, la recepción en los públicos y la creación de sentidos, la diplomacia cultural en la práctica y las percepciones sobre su valor. Este análisis teórico con base empírica, el primero en su tipo, provee las bases para un nuevo modelo de museos policéntricos: espacios con potencial para producir una visión caleidoscópica de centros múltiples y para ayudar a disolver los límites culturales, promoviendo el diálogo, la negociación y la búsqueda de la comprensión entre culturas. Embajadoras cosmopolitas también ofrece orientación para las tareas cotidianas en los museos, incluyendo recomendaciones para colaboraciones exitosas a nivel internacional, el desarrollo de exposiciones y la maximización del potencial de la diplomacia cultural.

Snapping and Wrapping: Personal Photography in Japan

Richard M. Chalfen, Temple University

'Snapping and Wrapping' represents an original study in Japanese visual culture, pictorial communication, and photographic studies. Vernacular visual culture is highlighted, stressing ordinary people and everyday life to explore photographic expressions of Japanese family life. The theme of “how people looked” is described from two closely related perspectives: how people appeared in their own photographs, and how people looked at specific features of their own lives with analog camera technology. The book includes unexamined material based on a qualitative study involving personal fieldwork undertaken between 1993 and 2009. The metaphor of “wrapping culture” (Hendry) is suggested for ways of interpreting relationships of personal family photographs in conjunction with acknowledged cultural influences and values of Japanese culture. Across an introduction and six chapters, the book covers a series of research topics evoked by efforts to recover, repair, and return millions of photographs to survivors following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Memory, privacy and kinds of information control are reviewed as parts of strategies of sharing pictures, “presence” and the use of photographs for interpersonal interaction and communication. Throughout the monograph, emphasis is placed on understanding details of analog personal photography for potential comparisons to the intensely popular digitalization of photographic recordings and, in turn, facilitate making informed speculations for future photographic practice. This book will be of interest to upper-level students, graduate students and scholars in the fields of media and culture, Asian Studies (especially Japanese visual culture), as well as those working on sensitive relationships of family, memory and representation.

Teaching In/Between: Curating Educational Spaces with Autohistoria-Teoría and Conocimiento

Leslie C. Sotomayor II, Texas Tech University

'Teaching In/Between: Curating educational spaces with autohistoria-teoría and conocimiento' is an iteration of an educator's embodied teaching and theorizing through testimonio work. Sotomayor, through a decolonizing feminist teaching inquiry, documents and analyzes her experiences as a facilitator in higher education while teaching the undergraduate course 'Latina Feminisms, Latinas in the US: Gender, Culture and Society'. This unique book is her interpretation and implementation of the seven recursive stages of Gloria Anzaldúa's conocimiento theory as transformative acts to guide her research design and teaching approach. Sotomayor's distinct bridging of Anzaldúa's theories of autohistoria-teoría and conocimiento offers an expansive perspective to how theorizing and curating our lived experiences can be transformational processes within academia. Sotomayor applies Anzaldúa's theories and her own theorizing to curate educational spaces that decolonize White hegemonic academic canons and empower underrepresented learners who may experience a deep sense of not belonging in academia. She situates herself in the study as curator, and her practice as curator as an agent of self-knowledge production and theorizing to create self-empowering learning environments. Sotomayor's work dwells within the lineage of border and cultural studies with shared voices of Gloria Anzaldúa, AnaLouise Keating, Mariana Ortega, Ami Kantawala, Maxine Greene, and Ruth Behar. Her work is considered a guide for teaching practitioners and researchers who hope to develop ways of knowing within their teaching environments that are inclusive and holistic for learners through a non-linear transformative process. 'Teaching In/Between' can be adapted for classroom use for pre-service teachers and instructors as well as creative interpretations for interdisciplinary works within Chicana/x, Latina/x, Art Education, Visual Arts and History, Women's & Gender Studies, Border and Cultural Studies.

Installation art as experience of self, in space and time

Edited by Christine Vial Kayser, Héritages UMR9022 (CNRS, CY, Ministère de la culture), France and Sylvie Coëllier, Aix-Marseille University, France

Installation art has modified our relationship to art for over fifty years by soliciting the whole body, demonstrating its sensitivity to space, surroundings, and the living beings with which it is constantly interacting. This book analyses this modification of perception through phenomenological approaches convoking Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, as well as Levinas, Depraz, and the neuroscientist Varela. This theoretical framework is implicit in the various case studies which revisit works that have become classic or emblematic by Carl Andre, Bruce Nauman, Dan Graham; inaugural experiments that remain available only through photographic and written archives by Jean-Michel Sanejouand, Philippe Parreno, as well as the influence of the mode in the realm of music. The book also examines the transference of this Western form to Asia, revealing how it resonates with ancient Asian representations and practices—often associated with the spiritual. The distinct chapters underpin the role of space as a metaframe, the common ground of the various installations. While the nature and agency of space varies—from social, historical space, leisurely or political space, inner psychological space, to shared empty space—these installations reveal the chiasm between the individual body and the outside space. The chapters bear testimony of the process in which the physical journey of the spectator’s body within a material—at times invisible—space and its structural components takes place in time, as a succession of micro-experiences. ‘Installation art as experience of self, in space and time’ adds to the existing literature of art history a level of theoretical, experiential and transcultural analysis that will make this inquiry relevant to both university students and independent researchers in the academic fields of philosophy, psychology, aesthetics, art theory and history, religious and Asian studies.

Wall to Wall: Law as Culture in Latin America and Spain

Edited by Carlos Varon, UC Riverside et al.

'Wall to Wall: Law as Culture in Latin America and Spain' comprises interventions from a wide array of scholars based in the US, Spain, and Latin America, exploring the encounter of Hispanophone cultures and the law. Its contributors delineate a fraught relationship of complicity, negotiation, and outright confrontation covering five centuries and a truly global landscape, from Inquisitorial processes at the onset of the Spanish Empire to last-ditch plans to preserve it in the 19th century Philippines, to the challenges to contemporary articulations of the nation-state in Catalonia. Beyond single, specialized time-period and national cultures, 'Wall to Wall' embraces and showcases the heterogeneity of the field, covering both well-known territory (Argentina, Mexico, Spain) and often-neglected cultures (Venezuela, Philippines, and indigenous communities in the Yucatan area), as well as problems that cannot be narrowed down to the nation-state (exile, independence processes, non-state laws, translation of foreign cultures). Contributors include: Aurélie Vialette, Daniel Aguirre-Oteiza, Daniela Dorfman, María Fernanda Lander, Gloria Elizabeth Chacón, Iván Trujillo, Benjamin Easton, Pauline de Tholozany, Lauren G.J. Reynolds, Ignasi Gozalo-Salellas, and Gabriela Balcarce. The chapters included foreground the conceptual diversity of the field, in dialogue with issues in literary and visual culture, (post-)colonialism, race, nationalism, gender, and class. Not only do they place vernacular objects in dialogue with current international concepts and methods, but these essays also aim to advance an autonomous conceptual and theoretical work-based approach. Its chapters aspire to enter a global discussion around the state-centered aspiration to shape culture and the many literary and cultural practices that escape it; researchers of those issues and Latin American and Iberian studies will find new venues to rethink their global archive.

Fashioning the Self: Identity and Style in British Culture

Edited by Emily Priscott

'Fashioning the Self: Identity and Style in British Culture' offers an eclectic approach to contemporary fashion studies. Taking a broad definition of British culture, this collection of essays explores the significance of style to issues such as colonialism, race, gender and class, embracing topics as diverse as eighteenth-century portraiture, literary dress culture and Edwardian working-class glamour. Examining the emblematic power of garments themselves and the context in which they are styled, this work interrogates the ways that personal style can itself decontextualize garments to radically reframe their meanings. Using an intentionally eclectic range of subjects from an interdisciplinary perspective, this collection builds on the work of theorists such as Aileen Ribeiro, Vika Martina Plock, Cheryl Buckley and Hilary Fawcett, to examine the social significance of personal style, while also highlighting the diversity of British culture itself.

Paris in the Americas: Yesterday and Today

Edited by Carole Salmon, Furman University

Across centuries, France -and especially its capital city, Paris- established itself as a major source of influence across the Americas through colonization, diplomacy and political influence, but also through intellectualism and cultural productions of all sorts, either by imposition, exportation or as a trend of fashion via a bilateral transatlantic movement of people and ideas. In itself, the influence of Paris, the “capital of the world,” as Patrice Higonnet (2002) analyzes it, is similar to a phantasmagoria, which results in a transatlantic fascination for the city of lights and all the tangible or intangible elements that function as its embodiment. As Stuart Hall explains, understanding cultures and languages and their representations through various manifestations presupposes that we can identify, understand and interpret the signs that constitute their core identity. (Hall 2013). In an interdisciplinary approach, this multi-authored, edited volume examines the long-established relationships between Paris and cities across the American continent, in the past as well as in the present time. In order to explore all aspects of Paris’s influence(s) in the Americas, this volume is organized around two main axes of analysis: first, in a geographical progression from North to South, the reader is invited to reflect upon cultural productions that demonstrate the many influences of Paris in the Americas through theater, literature, philosophy, fashion and cinema (chapters 1 to 6). In the following chapters (7 to 11), the volume focuses particularly on a variety of urban connections that take the reader from South to North this time, analyzing tangible architectural and urban design influences of Paris in major cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, New York, or Washington D.C. In today’s global world, this multifaceted study of Paris’ visible and invisible influences in the Americas clearly reveals the transnational intersections of spaces, languages, people and cultures.

Art as experience of the living body / L’art comme experience du corps vivant

An East/West dialogue / Un dialogue Orient/Occident

Edited by Christine Vial Kayser, Héritages UMR9022 (CNRS, CY, Ministère de la culture), France

This book analyses the dynamic relationship between art and subjective consciousness, following a phenomenological, pragmatist and enactive approach. It brings out a new approach to the role of the body in art, not as a speculative object or symbolic material but as the living source of the imaginary. It contains theoretical contributions and case studies taken from various artistic practices (visual art, theatre, literature and music), Western and Eastern, the latter concerning China, India and Japan. These contributions allow us to nourish the debate on embodied cognition and aesthetics, using theory–philosophy, art history, neuroscience–and the authors’ personal experience as artists or spectators. According to the Husserlian method of “reduction” and pragmatist introspection, they postulate that listening to bodily sensations–cramps, heartbeats, impulsive movements, eye orientation–can unravel the thread of subconscious experience, both active and affective, that emerge in the encounter between a subject and an artwork, an encounter which, following John Dewey, we deem to be a case study for life in general. Ce livre analyse la relation dynamique entre l’art et la conscience subjective, selon une approche phénoménologique, pragmatiste et enactive. Il vise à faire émerger une nouvelle approche du rôle du corps dans l’art, non pas comme objet spéculatif ou matériau symbolique, mais comme source vivante de l’imaginaire. Les contributions théoriques et les études de cas sont prises à diverses pratiques artistiques (arts visuels, théâtre, littérature et musique), occidentales et orientales, ces dernières concernant la Chine, l’Inde et le Japon. Selon la méthode husserlienne de « réduction », en écho à l’introspection pragmatiste, les textes témoignent que l’écoute des sensations corporelles – crampes, battements de cœur, mouvements pulsionnels, orientation des yeux – mises en jeu par l’œuvre, permet de dénouer le fil de l’expérience inconsciente, à la fois kinesthésique et affective, qui émerge dans la rencontre entre un sujet et une œuvre d’art, une rencontre comprise, à la manière de Dewey, comme un cas d’école de la vie en général.

Impressions from Paris: Women Creatives in Interwar Years France

Edited by Sylvie Eve Blum-Reid, University of Florida

‘Impressions from Paris’ studies the contributions of various women artists and writers who lived in Paris during the Interwar Years, from the 1920s to 1940. The “Roaring Twenties” constituted years of experimentation and freedom to test new techniques and lifestyles at a time affected by serious political changes leading to World War II. Their trajectories have left traces that can be mapped out, studied, and addressed today, a hundred years later. The volume revisits their experiences through various lenses that include art history, gender, fashion, literary analysis, psychology, philosophy, as well as film and food. The volume revisits the artistic, literary, and journalistic contributions of women worldwide, including France, as they flocked to Paris from the 1920s to 1940. The overall principle lies in the inclusion of female painters, visual artists, and writers from diverse international and national backgrounds. Scholars who participate in the volume explore the possibilities presented in a modern literary and artistic history while building on previous scholarship. Two seminal books and a documentary film inspire this project: Shari Benstock’s ‘Women of the Left Bank. Paris 1900-1940’ (Texas UP 1986) and Andrea Weiss’s ‘Paris was a woman. Portraits from the Left Bank’ (HarperSanFrancisco 1995), which in turn produced an eponymous film (Greta Schiller/Andrea Weiss 1996). These works highlight the community of women artists, editors and writers during the interwar years in Paris. There is scholarship in the area, although most of it is scattered in single monographs, crossing various genres, and various languages, from (recent) graphic novels, to fiction, biographical studies, cultural histories as well as scholarly artistic and literary studies.

Italy in the Second Half of the 19th Century: Bridging New Cultures

Edited by Francesca Cadel, University of Calgary and Paola Nastri

A period of turmoil, uncertainty, and fears, the second half of the nineteenth century in Italy is also characterized by resilience, creativity, courageous discussions on the emancipation of women, and a variety of cultural products that are instrumental for the birth of a new and modern culture that will lead to the achievements of the twentieth century. Contributing to and expanding on recent scholarships on Italian literature of the nineteenth century, the book presents a series of literary, interdisciplinary and intercultural case studies. These case studies explore the social and cultural dimensions of the period, investigating the historical, literary, artistic, cultural, and social events of the time while probing their significance and relevance in bridging new Italian cultures.