Session Convenors:
Claire Walsh, Birkbeck, University of London, clairew@nildram.co.uk
Matt Lodder, University of Reading, matt@postmodified.com

Speakers:
William Coleman (Courtauld Institute of Art) The End of the Mausoleum: Internal change and the museums of New York
Francesca Franco (Birkbeck College) Democracy and Art at the Venice Biennale: The legacy of 1968
Suzy Freake (University of Nottingham) Moving House: The murdering of Gregor Schneider’s Hausur
Maggie Gray (University College London) The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy: Comics in the gallery
Louise Hughes (University of Bristol) Nicely Framed and Heavily Varnished: The tattoo and conflicts of display
Seph Rodney (London Consortium) Two Rooms: The Tate Modern and the MoMA
Jillian Seaton (University of Edinburgh) Fortress Munch: Art theft and a new museum aesthetic
Arnisa Zeqo (University of Amsterdam) The Museum as a Battlefield for ‘Cultural Hegemony’? An example from the Netherlands

Session Abstract:
With art no longer confined to the walls of museums, and museums no longer confined to the walls that contain them, where is visual culture now located, and what are the implications of this shift for the institution of the museum and for the study of art history? This student session will explore themes around the location of visual culture in the museum. It will offer different constructions of meaning at a time when ideas of ‘the museum’ and ‘location’ are changing and being renegotiated.
While, in the 20th century, works like Duchamp’s Fountain and Warhol’s Brillo boxes gave the museum the role of a defining locus for making art ‘art’, artists increasingly use alternative spaces. What kind of challenge does this pose to the status of the museum as the location of visual culture? And now that the Tate’s fifth gallery is its online site, and museums start to draw more virtual than physical visitors, what will this mean for curators and the way we experience collections? Will it alter the way visual meaning is generated in the museum?
Questions of access and exclusion, first raised by Bourdieu in the sixties, are still unresolved. Despite the current popularity of museums, is cultural ownership still vested in those who possess ‘cultural capital’? What role is played by the physical location and how does a museum’s architecture influence and construct meaning? How has the rapid growth of educational and outreach departments altered the institution of the museum? Is the museum a site of ritual or a great marketing opportunity?
This session is intended to provide a discourse around location including, but not confined to, the issues outlined here. The session’s papers address the changing location of visual culture in a variety of historical and geographical contexts, from historic displays of art to the impact of twenty-first-century globalisation.