Learning from others

Grafica webinar Nov 2024 - learning from others (1)

Learning from others. Towards a Visitor-Centered Museum by Creating Diverse, Inclusive and Equitable Spaces

Tuesday, 19 November 2024, at 16.00 hrs Singapore (SGT)

Sessions are recorded and posted in the Members Only section of the CIMAM website for those who missed the time.

Abstract:

Diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion are pillars of the museum’s present and future social practices. However, embracing these concepts in the museum environment is not a guarantee of meaningful and progressive structural transformations in an increasingly polarized and fractured world. As a trusted institution and agent of constructive social change, museums have to learn to navigate complex and diverse social, political and cultural contexts. This involves identifying problems, inventing new languages and implementing relevant policies for museums to realize the potential for social good. Generous sharing and listening to best practices using specific cases studies is crucial towards a visitor-centered museum that learns from each other to engage with the diversity of audience groups with multiple perspectives and lived experiences.

Guest Panelists:

  • Zheng Bo, Artist, Hong Kong.
  • Candice Breitz, Artist, Berlin, Germany.
  • Hiuwai Chu, Head of Exhibitions and Curator, Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain.

Moderated by CIMAM Board members Yu Jin Seng, Director (Curatorial, Research & Exhibitions), National Gallery Singapore, Singapore, and Amanda de la Garza, Deputy Artistic Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain.

Biographies:

Zheng Bo

Artist, Hong Kong:

Zheng Bo is an ecoqueer artist of ethnic Bai heritage. They collaborate with dancers, farmers, and scientists to cultivate kinship with plants: ferns in Taiwan, moss in Scandinavia, date palms in the Gulf. Their ecological practice arises from more-than-human intimacy and contributes to the emergence of a planetary indigeneity.

Recent projects include commissions at the Huntington in Los Angeles and Somerset House in London, solos at Gropius Bau in Berlin and Göteborgs Konsthall in Gothenburg, and participation in the 59th Venice Biennale. Their works are in the collections of Tate Modern, Power Station of Art, Rockbund Art Museum, and Hammer Museum, among others.

Candice Breitz

Artist, Berlin, Germany:

Candice Breitz (Johannesburg, 1972) is a Berlin-based artist whose moving image installations have been shown internationally. Most recently, her work has focused on the conditions under which empathy is produced, reflecting on a media-saturated global culture in which strong identification with fictional characters and celebrity figures runs parallel to widespread indifference to the plight of those facing real world adversity. She recently completed her ‘White Noise Trilogy,’ which she has been working on since 2015.

Solo exhibitions of Breitz’s works have been hosted by Tate Liverpool, the Museum Folkwang, Kunstmuseum Bonn, the National Gallery of Canada, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Kunsthaus Bregenz, MUSAC / Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León (Spain), Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, The Power Plant, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Boston’s Museum of Fine Art and the Castello di Rivoli, among other institutions.

In 2017, she represented South Africa at the 57th Venice Biennale alongside Mohau Modisakeng. Her work is represented in the collections of MoMA and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (both in New York), Tate Modern, the National Gallery of Canada, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk), M+ (Hong Kong), the Power Plant (Toronto), the Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), the Pinchuk Art Center (Kyiv), the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), Fonds national d’art contemporain (France), the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne) and MAXXI (Rome), among other museums.

Hiuwai Chu

Head of Exhibitions and Curator, MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain:

Hiuwai Chu is Head of Exhibitions at MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, where she has worked since 2007 as Assistant Curator and Curator. She has curated exhibitions such as Lydia Ourahmane: 108 Days (2023-24); Daniel Steegmann Mangrané: A Leaf Shapes the Eye (2023); Bouchra Khalili: Between Circles and Constellations (2023); Panorama 21: Notes for an Eyer Fire (2021), Charlotte Posenenske: Work in Progress (2019), Undefined Territories: Perspectives on Colonial Legacies (2019), and Akram Zaatari. Against Photography: An Annotated History of the Arab Image Foundation (2017).

She is co-editor of the book Climate: Our Right to Breath (K. Verlag, 2022). She is on the board of Hangar, an artist residency and center for research and production, and of Cordova, an independent curatorial project, both based in Barcelona. She was a member of the editorial board of L’Internationale Online from 2021 - 2021.

Before moving to Barcelona, Chu worked as associate editor at Aperture Foundation, New York. She studied anthropology at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Amanda de la Garza

Artistic Deputy Director, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS), Madrid, Spain:

Amanda de la Garza (Mexico, 1981) is a curator and art historian. In 2024 she was appointed as the new Artistic Deputy Director of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid, Spain. Previously she was the Head of Visual Arts at UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico) and the Director of the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC - Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo). From 2012 to 2019 she worked as Adjunct Curator at MUAC.

She has developed curatorial projects in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Spain and USA. She has been awarded the Emerging Curators Prize, Frontiers Biennial, and several research grants in Mexico and abroad. She has published poems, interviews, reviews and academic papers in local and international journals on subjects such as poetry, documentary photography, urban studies and contemporary art. She is interested in interdisciplinary practices in contemporary art that involve poetry, cinema, Social Sciences, archival research and contemporary dance.

Yu Jin Seng

Director (Curatorial, Research & Exhibitions), National Gallery Singapore, Singapore:

Yu Jin Seng was appointed Director (Curatorial, Research & Exhibitions) of the National Gallery Singapore in 2024, where he previously held the position of Senior Curator and Deputy Director (Curatorial and Research). Before that, he was a Lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts in the MA Asian Art Histories and BA Fine Arts programs, and now lectures at the National University of Singapore’s Minor in Art History program. He obtained his PhD from the University of Melbourne in 2019.

Seng’s research interests cover regional art histories focusing on Southeast Asian art in relation to studies on diaspora, migration, and cultural transfers. He is currently researching artistic activities and their histories, focusing on the history of exhibitions and artist collectives in Southeast Asia.

He currently sits on the Board of OH! Open House, an independent arts organization based in Singapore that makes visible the hidden histories of neighborhood and communities through site-specific artworks in unconventional public and private spaces. His curatorial experience in public art museums and independent art organizations enable him to negotiate the complexities of critically engaging with diverse publics, spaces and ways of working cross culturally.

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CIMAM 2024 Rapid Response Webinars are made possible with the support from the Getty Foundation through its Connecting Professionals/Sharing Expertise initiative.