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Session at SECAC 2020 (Richmond, 21-24 Oct 20)
76th Annual Meeting of the Southeast College Art Conference, Virginia
Commonwealth University, School of the Arts, Richmond, VA, USA, Oct 21–24, 2020 Deadline: May 15, 2020
ArtHist Redaktion
Combatting Hate and Intolerance through Art Museum Collections Jennifer McComas
jmccomas@indiana.edu
In August 2017, white nationalists marched in Charlottesville, not far from SECAC's Richmond venue, chanting antisemitic slogans and violently attacking people of color. Since then, we have witnessed a disturbing upsurge of antisemitic, racist, and anti-immigrant speech and violence.
What can art museums do about it? A new statement from the International Council of Museums (ICOM) argues that museums, far from simply functioning as repositories for cultural artifacts, are
"spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures," charging curators to "contribute to human dignity and social justice." What role, then, can curators--and those, such as faculty, who utilize museums within their teaching--play in addressing such issues as nationalist extremism, religious intolerance, and racism? How can curators and faculty engage art museum collections to educate students and the public not only to value diversity, but to understand the historical and contemporary factors underlying systemic racism and antisemitic conspiracy theories? At the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University, some of these subjects were recently incorporated into a permanent collection reinstallation. This session solicits case studies focusing on exhibi- tions, collection reinstallations, and classes that critically engage(d) museum collections to con- front hate, as well as more philosophically oriented discussions.
Interested scholars should submit for consideration an abstract of 200 words or less via the fol- lowing online portal: https://secac.secure-platform.com.
Abstracts may be submitted through 15 May 2020.
Questions regarding the above session may be addressed to the chair at jmccomas@indiana.edu.
For general inquiries, please contact the Conference Director, Carly Phinizy at secac2020@vcu.e- du.
N.B. Any scholar whose paper is accepted to the session must be (or become) an active member of SECAC through the date of the conference and pay the conference registration fee.
Reference:
CFP: Session at SECAC 2020 (Richmond, 21-24 Oct 20). In: ArtHist.net, Mar 30, 2020 (accessed Feb 27,
ArtHist.net
2/2 2022), <https://arthist.net/archive/22912>.
