Wednesday 14 September, 12.00–19.00
Welcome, 12.00–12.10
Maria Balshaw, Director of Tate, welcomes attendees to the conference, and Pip Laurenson, Project Lead for Reshaping the Collectible, introduces the first day’s sessions
Session 1, 12.10–15.10
Unsettling Inherited Practices
Convened by Libby Ireland and Jack McConchie
Building on learning undertaken within the conservation team through working with artists Ima-Abasi Okon and Richard Bell, this session will investigate inherited practices in museums. By identifying the museum as a colonial institution and acknowledging collection care’s complicity in the traditional museum drive to own, fix and hold the knowledge around artworks, the session will look at how our inherited procedures and approaches may be limiting the ability of artworks to live in the museum.
The discussion will focus on the changing practice of staff in the Collection Care Division prompted by their interaction with artists and artworks, and will explore the possibilities for change – both on an individual and institutional level. Ideas that will be explored include slowness, care, slippage and loss, degrowth and the changing relationship between the museum, artist and artwork through theories of radical hospitality.
Speakers:
- Libby Ireland, Sculpture and Installations Conservator, Tate
- Richard Kearney, Charles Seelig Chair of Philosophy, Boston College
- Jack McConchie, Time-based Media Conservator, Tate
- Gala Porras-Kim, artist
- More speakers to be announced
Session 2, 15.25–17.00
Beyond an Archival Impulse
Convened by Sarah Haylett
This session will present the research undertaken around the boundaries between artworks, records and archives from the perspectives of the key stakeholders: artists, archivists and the museum.
It will balance how and why artists look to ‘the archive’ as a medium or leitmotif in their practice, with shifts in the archival sector, looking at ideas of neutrality and the archive as a system of power and exclusion. It will draw on how these two ideas overlap, exploring the practices of artists who have moved beyond archival imagery into actively creating archives within their artworks. Finally, it will introduce the participatory and collaborative record-creator centred archival methodologies that will allow these archives to exist, expand and make space for new voices in the art museum.
Speakers:
- Richard Bell, artist
- Kathy Corbone, Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, University of California Los Angeles
- Sarah Haylett, PhD researcher, UCL/Tate
- Moi Tran, artist
- More speakers to be announced
Session 3, 17.00–19.00
Starting a Slow Conversation
Convened by Libby Ireland, Sculpture and Installations Conservator, Tate
This discussion will draw on ideas discussed in the conference session Unsettling Inherited Practices, which will outline ‘inherited practices’ as processes, mindsets and tools which have been developed within museums to aid the colonial practice of collecting. These are used to bolster principles of ownership, knowledge-holding and fixity which are intrinsic to traditional museum collecting, whilst shifting power away from the artist and artwork, stifling evolution, emotion and multiplicity.
Examples of inherited practices could include the concept of the neutral voice, the preference for speed and efficiency, and the emphasis on artist interviews as a tool for fixing the artwork and separating the work from the artist, whilst decentring more informal and non-linguistic modes of understanding.
This additional time will give an opportunity for attendees to work together to discuss the idea of inherited practices in more depth, drawing on their own experiences to understand where inherited practices may be limiting their ability to respond to artworks. This will also create space for attendees to think about how they can change their practices, and seek change within their workplaces, to better host artworks, artists and objects.
By giving space for undirected, small group discussions, we hope this time can be the beginning of slow conversations which can draw out over time. These complex conversations take time to allow for thought, change and discussion, and we hope that this can be the start of an unfolding dialogue.
