[artinfo] "How Global?" conference

[Art&Education]

"How Global?": international conference exploring 
new directions in public art collecting

June 23-24, 2016

Arnolfini and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
Bristol, UK

<http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/how-global>www.arnolfini.org.uk

Arnolfini, in collaboration with Bristol Museum & 
Art Gallery, present an international 
<http://www.arnolfini.org.uk/whatson/how-global>conference to 
investigate new directions in collecting 
international art by public museums. "How Global" 
will focus on critical, practical and theoretical 
engagement with institutional approaches to 
contemporary collecting, highlighting non-western 
voices and perspectives.

What does "elsewhere" mean to both artists and 
museums? Who gets to decide what a public art 
collection is, or should be, and how do artists 
antagonise and shape institutional collecting? 
How do we use museums and other public art 
spaces? Who collects and why? 

Driven by the necessity of addressing critical 
challenges around globalisation, and responding 
to the Art Fund International scheme in which 
five UK museums were awarded 4 million GBP to 
develop international contemporary art 
collections from 2007-12, this conference will 
explore the key ideas, approaches and positions 
informing the shape of public collections and 
institutions not only in the UK but in other 
continents and contexts.

Through presentations, performances and case 
studies, international experts, museum directors 
and scholars will join artists and curators-some 
speaking to UK audiences for the first time-to 
provide insight into the conceptual and practical 
challenges related to collecting today and the 
complex relationship between museums and 
strategies of decolonisation.

Questions and provocations include: How is public 
art collecting learning about and responding to 
changing audiences? What constitutes a 
responsible "global museum"? What is the evidence 
of post-colonial awareness in museum policies? 
How do public art collections reflect on the 
distinctions, and confusions, between global and 
local? 

These will also provide a context and conceptual 
framework to reflect on some of the themes in 
Arnolfini and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery's 
current exhibition Art from Elsewhere, such as 
migration, capital and consumerism, and the 
question of whether post-colonial experience is 
in fact neo-colonial.

The event will consider how a diverse spectrum of 
artistic practice and artists can be supported by 
public museum collections, particularly in 
relation to art produced outside of the western 
canon, and what public museums are able to offer 
that growing numbers of private museums cannot.

The conference will open at Bristol Museum & Art 
Gallery on the evening of Thursday, June 23 with 
a special keynote lecture by Gerardo Mosquera, 
one of Latin America's most prominent art 
curators and writers, addressing the challenges 
facing museums and public collections coping with 
the increasing internationalisation of the 
production and circulation of art.

Other speakers include:
Élise Atangana, Paris-based curator and producer; 
Kate Brindley, CEO/Director, Arnoflini; David 
Elliott, writer and curator of Art from 
Elsewhere; Vasif Kortun, Director of Research and 
Programs at SALT, Istanbul; Ruth Noack, curator 
and art historian based in Vienna; and Jaros½aw 
Suchan, Director of Muzeum Sztuki in ¸ódê, with 
more participants to be confirmed shortly.