[Bilimsel Haber] Multiculturalism, Migration, and the Mega-Exhibition: Considering the Impacts of Contemporary Festivals, Biennales, and Documentas

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

*Multiculturalism, Migration, and the Mega-Exhibition: Considering the
Impacts of Contemporary Festivals, Biennales, and Documentas*
*Location:* 	United Kingdom
<http://www.h-net.org/announce/geography.cgi?geography=United%20Kingdom>

	

	

	

Described by Tim Griffin as events 'endowed with a transnational
circuitry,' contemporary festivals, biennales, triennials, and other
large-scale exhibitions have served as increasingly prevalent form for
creative, cultural, and scholarly exchanges. Yet, these exhibitions have
also complicated the ways in which critics consider the elements, roles,
and effects of artistic production and exhibition. While large-scale
exhibitions have amplified concerns about 'curatorial dictatorships' and
the potential homogenisation of cultural expression, they have also
enabled a greater visibility of projects and approaches outside the
mainstream and have challenged the viability of 'center/periphery'
thinking in a global art market.

Important questions arise: Can large-scale, transnational exhibitions
adequately engage with the complex rhetorics of globalisation whilst
maintaining relevance to exhibitions' unique localities and specific
cultural contexts? Do mega-exhibitions facilitate what Okwui Enwezor
calls 'greater methodological and discursive flexibility,' or do they
become 'cultural safaris'-succumbing to the disadvantages of and
disorientations caused by their sheer size and sprawl?

This session is an important part of the 2008 Association of Art
Historians Annual Conference, to be held at the Tate Britain and Tate
Modern from April 2-4, 2008. The session will explore the critical,
cultural, commercial, geopolitical, and aesthetic debates that have
surfaced in relation to large-scale, transnational exhibition
programming. It will also examine the effectiveness of such exhibitions'
mediation of global and local concerns and their overall ability to
establish sustainable connections between the museum, the academy, the
studio, and the viewer. Papers are invited from art historians, critics,
curators, artists, administrators, and others whose research and
experience contribute to an elucidation of these timely concerns. Papers
examining these issues as they pertain to Asian, African, South
American, and Oceanic exhibitions and/or art practices are particularly
invited.

	Royce W. Smith
School of Art & Design, Box 67
Wichita State University
1845 N. Fairmount
Wichita, KS 67260-0067
Phone: +1 316-978-7713
Fax: +1 316 978-5418
Email: royce.smith at wichita.edu <mailto:royce.smith at wichita.edu>
Visit the website at http://aah.org.uk/conference/2008session25.php