ARTH 400 - Advanced Seminar in Art Historical Method: Curatorial Strategies for Craft

• J - 9:00-11:30
• EV-3.760
• INSTRUCTOR: DR. ELAINE CHEASLEY-PATERSON
  

Craft is shaped by its perception as an accessible art form, often preoccupied with the ordinary, the everyday, the repetitive, the functional, the traditional, the decorative, the mundane, among others. This seminar will explore the problematic of exhibiting such objects and practices within museums or other institutional frameworks.  

Using recent examples of craft exhibitions, we will examine issues relevant to contemporary museum practice, curatorial issues of exhibition and display and the relation between collecting practice and the history of art. A series of case studies will inform the weekly seminar discussions, such as Disobedient Objects (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2014); Global Africa Project (Museum of Arts and Design, 2011); Hand+Made: The Performative Impulse in Art and Craft (Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, 2010), The Power of Making (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2011); She Will Always Be Younger Than Us (Textile Museum of Canada, 2009); Gestures of Resistance (Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, 2011), Naked Craft (Centre Materia, Quebec, 2015) and Sovereign Acts II (Ellen Art Gallery, Concordia University, 2017).

Students will be expected to engage with this material through readings, discussions, exhibition visits, primary and archival research. As the final project for this seminar, it is anticipated that students will address the material from the course by developing a substantive exhibition concept for select craft practices, including a detailed written curatorial strategy for craft grounded in their seminar learning.