Key points:
Caro Howell, Director, Foundling Museum
Ornament, By Product or Instrument
Ornament is never neutral. Historians tend to be male and the victor. Approach stories from different perspectives. Include the audience in the reassessment. Eg in the cafe (now study room) the walls are covered in names from children's books ... who were foundlings. When I saw this on a visit, I understood that children would buy into the museum, because they would identify with the characters they had read about. Also adults. I identified with the names from books of my generation, and those like Harry Potter, but I was not familiar with Hetty Feather.
Great quote from Caro: The voice of entitlement accuses of dumbing down.
Artists have a freedom to hold a number of narratives in balance at the same time. The Foundling uses modern artists' art as a call to action; to showcase talent and its own charitable status. Yinka Shonibare is one of their trustees, and his work Trumpet Boy has inspired many narratives from visitors.
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| Installation-view-of-Yinka-Shonibare-MBE,-Trumpet-Boy,-2010-©-Yinka-Shonibare.-Photograph-by-Dan-Weill-Photography |
The Foundling likes the agency of contemporary artists to the gallery. The artist's ambition to effect change on contemporary issues, makes them more accessible. The Foundling uses the power of artists and art to change the world.
Caro noted that children and women are absent from the imagery at the Foundling(!). Their presence is only represented by the objects - often created by the artists.
Caro listed various organisations with whom they work eg Central St Martins, because their students produce work of high standards. Standards are important to the Foundling. I know the Foundling appears reluctant to work with groups other than those already known to the commissioning team, because when I was at the City Lit, one of our class members made some heart-wrenching soap sculptures that were brilliant, and was given the brush-off by them.
The ongoing story at the Foundling - how to tell history to children? Via art and images. Find the gaps and fill them intelligently. Find the positions of the audience in the work. This is why one of their Victorian artworks has been reproduced with Hetty Feather included - gets buy-in from children.
Neutral = neutered!
Jasleen Kaur, DecoloniSingh
Went to Glasgow School of Art, thence to RCA
Minorities are excluded from creative industries. Interested in Decolonising Museums. Placing people between invisibility <-> hyper visibility.
Her provocations: How to decolonise when listening to marginalised voices? Griselda Pollock - Culture is a weapon - if it was not, we would all have access to it.
Try Sara Ahmed, Institutional Racism book.
Kaur wanted to put a turban on a statue of Lord Napier in London. White generals in India, in the time of the Raj, assimilated the turban. Putting a turban on the statue required permissions, but on boundaries of two boroughs, much red tape, plus permission from the current Lord Napier. So wrote the current Lord Robert Napier - tied a turban on him instead. Her father did it as he ties better turbans. (Their lunch was Coronation Chicken - how imperial!!).
Diversity is more than tokenism. Kaur spoke of The exhaustion that museums are echo chambers for white male privilege.
Kaur spoke of hierarchies of art and media. Bricks in the Tate or bricks in an Indian brickyard with a pile of cow shit? Rural and urban brickmaking. Values in cultural production. Careful, artistic work, or primitive, gestural and intuitive (is this what I am doing with my stitch? Not working to a plotted pattern, but intuitively working it out as I go?)
Matt Smith
What a great speaker! He'd been working with parian ware - fake marble created by mixing porcelain with flux. Cheap slip casts of important people (according to whom?!). Flux is an unstable substance added to porcelain for the purpose of memoralising (or stabilising?). So who was picked for these casts - and by whom? Only one non-europeans, but much facial hair!
He also spoke about man marl - a German phrase that indicates we also need to remember the painful things we have done. Matt had chosen about 6 key figures and staged them each on a wall, with a newly drawn wallpaper that showed some of the horrible things associated with these people. Truly shameful things associated with 'heroes'.
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| Forget his name, but he was influential in creating an opium trade |
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| And this is Matt Smith's wallpaper representing it. |
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| Lord Havelock |
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| I find this one horrific and really disturbing |
Lord Havelock (General in Boer War) tied sepoys (captured opponents) to cannons and executed them by firing the cannons, to scatter their body parts. The Sepoys believed the body had to be complete at death, so Havelock was spectacularly attacking the remaining peoples, by exploding their captured forces. (The General Havelock was a pub in Ilford, where I was brought up, and the name was explained to me, as him being a Boer war hero. Really!).
Richard Sandell, worked with National Trust, as consultant for Prejudice and Pride last year.
His role was to position the NT for equality issues. Prejudice is now shown in society via silences and avoidance. There is a link between museums and silences reading these groups. This is a polarised debate which needs to be facilitated debate and ethically shape it. Felbrigg Hall, where there was a 50th anniversary of decriminalisation of homosexuality exhibition about the gay final owner of the house, led to a huge debate about whether volunteers should be required to wear the rainbow lanyard. He recommended a calm and nuanced response to audience reaction. Some volunteers were put on backroom duties and it led to a few resignations from the role, and a right wing media campaign bad-mouthing Prejudice and Pride, stating people would leave the NT in droves. Notably, in 2017 c240 people ended their membership out of 4.2 million. And in 2018 there has been a surge in membership to 5million.
Richard Sandell was part of the Pride march (in Brighton?) where the National Trust had a banner in the parade, and as they went past various groups he could see people saying "O - M - G!! The National Trust!". Presumably because the visitors did not expect to see the NT in this context.
There are various places in the NT with strong LGBT histories eg Sissinghurst and Vita Sackville-West and Felbrigg Hall with ... Kingston Lacey with W J Banks did a piece on the history of 51 executions of gay men during Banks life - they put nooses in the entrance hall, with the knot positioned to represent how old these men were when executed. Very dramatic.
50 years of decriminationisation - it's not a celebration. There are still issues. How to navigate ethical challenges - understand audience responses.
Necessary to identify the Values they stand by. Not different perspectives on it. Different views, but be very clear on their, National Trust values.
Catrin Jones Holburne Museum, Bath
Should the curator be neutral? I was tired now, and did not take notes.
I asked a question about how the lessons from Prejudice and Pride could be applied to the Women and Power theme at NT. Gain resilience from Prejudice and Pride. Be clear about contested histories, but in a safe environment. Polarised but not avoided. But above all be braver in interpretation. Tell the story from the perspective of the non-dominant.
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| Me and Matt Smith |
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