Abstract: In 2020 the artist Olivia Plender was commissioned to create Our Bodies are Not the Problem, The Problem is Power, a new socially engaged artwork for Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL, an Accredited Museum). Part of the Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism curatorial project, Plender’s intervention focused on the histories of women’s health activism and grassroots collective initiatives including the well-known global publication project, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Plender began by transforming GWL’s Community Room to make it more comfortable for the individuals and groups who use it. Incorporating drawings, soft furnishings, new lighting and displays of health-related materials pulled from the GWL archive, the space was then used as a conversation piece within which Plender hosted a series of workshops for women to share their experiences of living with chronic health conditions. In turn, these will lead to the production of a new workbook which has been acquired in advance for The University of Edinburgh’s Contemporary Art Research Collection. This paper will focus on the curatorial and institutional dimensions of this durational artwork. As a member of the respective curatorial teams and as an art historian, I consider what it reveals about the limitations and potential of existing museum models when it comes to facilitating and collecting practices which centre healthcare. What might a feminist methodology look like in this context and what role can museums play in terms of bridging the gap between the evolution of feminist theories on care in the academy and the negotiation of feminist demands on the ground?
Panel cfp: Since the 1960s, the prevailing biomedical definition of health—an understanding of wellness and illness framed in terms of physical disease and its presence/absence—has been called into question. A broader definition acknowledges the entanglements of body, psyche and society, emphasizing social and cultural determinants of health including marginalization. Museums have long been at the center of debates over how institutions perpetuate such harms or offer opportunities for remediation—an ambivalence seen in ongoing efforts to decolonize museums alongside the emergence of the cultural prescription (a museum visit recommended by a health care provider). Through emergent practices of contemporary art informed by lineages of institutional critique and social practice from the 1990s—but also through novel forms of engagement extending across art and public health—museums are being reimagined as places of care. Inspired by projects including artist Grace Ndiritu’s Healing the Museum and curator Clémentine Deliss’s Metabolic Museum, this panel invites consideration of how artists, curators, educators and publics are reconfiguring museums in relationship to health and wellness. Proposal topics may include but are not limited to: the development of healing interventions by artists in museums; the convergence of clinic and art gallery or studio spaces; efforts to re-signify and repair museum collections and archives; advocacy related to health justice and access through art-making, exhibitions or public engagement; and institutional resistance to change and virtue signaling. Methodological approaches from curatorial, artistic and art historical perspectives, and beyond, are welcome, as are papers addressing inter/transnational, European and U.K. contexts.
Session Convenor:
Megan Voeller, Tyler School of Art & Architecture, Temple University, and Thomas Jefferson University