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Unit outline_

ARHT6937: Curating Asian Art

Semester 2, 2021 [Normal day] - Remote

This unit investigates the development of Asian art exhibitions and the role of the curator of Asian art. Course material will be based on the broad range of activities of local curators, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Asian Australian Arts Centre. Issues examined include museum policy, research resources, staffing structures, publicity and educational activities. Comparative case studies will be made of pre-modern, modern and contemporary Asian art exhibitions.

Unit details and rules

Academic unit Art History
Credit points 6
Prerequisites
? 
None
Corequisites
? 
None
Prohibitions
? 
None
Assumed knowledge
? 

None

Available to study abroad and exchange students

Yes

Teaching staff

Coordinator Yvonne Low, yvonne.low@sydney.edu.au
Type Description Weight Due Length
Presentation Seminar Presentation
Presentation on selected topic.
20% Multiple weeks 15 min presentation and 800 wd write up
Outcomes assessed: LO1 LO4 LO3 LO5 LO2
Participation Attendance and participation
Students are required to attend and participate actively in all sessions.
10% Ongoing Ongoing
Outcomes assessed: LO1 LO5 LO4 LO3 LO2
Assignment Exhibition Analysis Exercise
Case-study
20% Week 07
Due date: 24 Sep 2021 at 23:59
1500 words
Outcomes assessed: LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5
Assignment Final research paper
Research paper
50% Week 13
Due date: 14 Nov 2021 at 23:59
2500 words
Outcomes assessed: LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5

Assessment summary

  • Workshop and seminar participation: students are required to attend and participate actively in all sessions. Workshop and seminars will include group discussions and students collaborating in exercises targeted at curatorial practice and thinking skills. Students may miss no more than two seminar meetings without penalty.
  • Dangrove research and exhibition pitch: this is a group assignment that will give students the opportunity to research and design a curatorial project using the resources available at the dangrove art storage for the white rabbit gallery. More information will be provided on canvas.
  • Curatorial portfolio: students are asked to develop field notes based on their responses to a site visit or workshop. This exercise is ongoing throughout the semester where students are required to attend particular exhibitions prior to the seminar, and to bring their field notes along for discussion.
  • Final research project: the project may take one of three forms; exhibition catalogue essay, exhibition or collection history, other.

Detailed information for each assessment can be found on Canvas.

Assessment criteria

The University awards common result grades, set out in the Coursework Policy 2014 (Schedule 1).

As a general guide, a High distinction indicates work of an exceptional standard, a Distinction a very high standard, a credit a good standard, and a pass an acceptable standard.

Result name

Mark range

Description

High distinction

85 - 100

 

Distinction

75 - 84

 

Credit

65 - 74

 

Pass

50 - 64

 

Fail

0 - 49

When you don’t meet the learning outcomes of the unit to a satisfactory standard.

For more information see guide to grades.

Late submission

In accordance with University policy, these penalties apply when written work is submitted after 11:59pm on the due date:

  • Deduction of 5% of the maximum mark for each calendar day after the due date.
  • After ten calendar days late, a mark of zero will be awarded.

Academic integrity

The Current Student website provides information on academic integrity and the resources available to all students. The University expects students and staff to act ethically and honestly and will treat all allegations of academic integrity breaches seriously.

We use similarity detection software to detect potential instances of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breach. If such matches indicate evidence of plagiarism or other forms of academic integrity breaches, your teacher is required to report your work for further investigation.

Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and automated writing tools

You may only use generative AI and automated writing tools in assessment tasks if you are permitted to by your unit coordinator. If you do use these tools, you must acknowledge this in your work, either in a footnote or an acknowledgement section. The assessment instructions or unit outline will give guidance of the types of tools that are permitted and how the tools should be used.

Your final submitted work must be your own, original work. You must acknowledge any use of generative AI tools that have been used in the assessment, and any material that forms part of your submission must be appropriately referenced. For guidance on how to acknowledge the use of AI, please refer to the AI in Education Canvas site.

The unapproved use of these tools or unacknowledged use will be considered a breach of the Academic Integrity Policy and penalties may apply.

Studiosity is permitted unless otherwise indicated by the unit coordinator. The use of this service must be acknowledged in your submission as detailed on the Learning Hub’s Canvas page.

Outside assessment tasks, generative AI tools may be used to support your learning. The AI in Education Canvas site contains a number of productive ways that students are using AI to improve their learning.

Simple extensions

If you encounter a problem submitting your work on time, you may be able to apply for an extension of five calendar days through a simple extension.  The application process will be different depending on the type of assessment and extensions cannot be granted for some assessment types like exams.

Special consideration

If exceptional circumstances mean you can’t complete an assessment, you need consideration for a longer period of time, or if you have essential commitments which impact your performance in an assessment, you may be eligible for special consideration or special arrangements.

Special consideration applications will not be affected by a simple extension application.

Using AI responsibly

Co-created with students, AI in Education includes lots of helpful examples of how students use generative AI tools to support their learning. It explains how generative AI works, the different tools available and how to use them responsibly and productively.

WK Topic Learning activity Learning outcomes
Week 01 "From Expositions to Biennales: A century of showing Asian Art"; Lecture and Discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3
Week 02 Cultural politics and Asian artists in Australian Exhibitions; Lecture and Discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5
Week 03 Re-alignments: Asia in Triennials and Asian Triennials; Lecture and discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5
Week 04 Museums and Public Collections: Role of the Curator; Lecture and Presentation/Discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5
Week 05 Re-imagining Asia: National Gallery Singapore; Guest lecture and discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4
Week 06 Re-imagining Asia: Guggenheim and Japan’s Gutai; Lecture and Presentation/Discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5
Week 07 Private and Public Collections: Framing ‘China’ and ‘Chineseness'; Lecture and Presentation/Discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5
Week 08 Women re-modelling contemporary art worlds: Exhibitions and Projects; Lecture and Presentation/Discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5
Week 09 The Digital turn: Interventions and Innovations in Feminist art history; Workshop and discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4
Week 10 Digital Methods in Museums: Site and Object; Lecture and Presentation/Discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5
Week 11 University Museums: Collecting and Curating; Guest lecture and discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4
Week 12 Issues of Contemporaneity: Dislocation, Disillusionment and going “International”; Lecture and Presentation/Discussion Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4 LO5
Week 13 A Coda: Collecting and Showing 'Contemporary Asian Art'; Lecture and discussion/reflection Seminar (2 hr) LO1 LO2 LO3 LO4

Attendance and class requirements

  • Attendance: According to Faculty Board Resolutions, students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences are expected to attend 90% of their classes. If you attend less than 50% of classes, regardless of the reasons, you may be referred to the Examiner’s Board. The Examiner’s Board will decide whether you should pass or fail the unit of study if your attendance falls below this threshold.
  • Preparation: Students should commit to spend approximately three hours’ preparation time (reading, studying, homework, essays, etc.) for every hour of scheduled instruction.

Study commitment

Typically, there is a minimum expectation of 1.5-2 hours of student effort per week per credit point for units of study offered over a full semester. For a 6 credit point unit, this equates to roughly 120-150 hours of student effort in total.

Required readings

Week 1: 10 August 2021

An Introduction

 

“From Expositions to Biennales: A century of showing Asian Art”

 

Welcome to Curating Asian Art. For this inaugural seminar, we will explore briefly the historical developments in the exhibition of Asian Art in the international arena, beginning with World Exhibitions. We will identify the contexts in which the display, collection and viewing of Asian art were made where we will also explore the issues and politics that centre around this cultural phenomenon. We will also examine the significance of Asian participation in the contemporary art world, tracing the rise of Asia’s involvement in the Biennale.

 

Prescribed Reading:

. Tan, Chang, “Telling global stories, one at a time: the politics and poetics of exhibiting Asian art”, World Art, vol. 5, no. 2 (2015): 307–330.

. McCormick, Seth, “Exhibition as Proposition: Responding critically to the third mind [with Response]”, Art Journal, vol. 68, no. 3, (2009): 30-51.

 

Additional Readings:

 

. Green, Charles and Gardner, Anthony. “Biennials of the South on the Edges of the Global,” Third Text 27, no. 4 (2013): 442-455.

. Clark, John. “Asian artists as long-distance cultural specialists in the formation of modernities” in Asia through Art and Anthropology: Cultural Translation across Borders, Fuyubi Nakamura, Morgan Perkins and Olivier Krischer, eds. (London: Bloomsbury, 2003) 19-32.

. Viau-Courville, Mathieu. “Museums without (Scholar-)Curators: Exhibition-making in times of managerial curatorship”, Museum International, vol. 68, no. 3/4 (2016): 11-32.

. Poshyananda, Apinan, et. al. Contemporary art in Asia: traditions, tensions (New York : Asia Society Galleries, 1996).

. Oren, Michel. “Contemporary art in Asia: Traditions/tensions,” Third Text 11, no. 41 (Jun 2008): 103-106.

 

Week 2: 17 August 2021

Cultural politics and Asian artists in Australian Exhibitions 

 

For this seminar we will examine the recent history of exhibiting Asian art in Australia against the politicisation of Asian identities and the making of Asian-Australian identities. This is part of a larger exploration of related issues centring around exhibition making and its politics in the context of Australia. Here, we will begin with Gallery 4A, the first institution in Australia focusing on the exhibiting of contemporary Asian art. 

 

Discussion: How does 4A  seek to work and what kind of curators do they seek to be and foster? What are the complexities and politics of working in the "Asia" sphere? How do small spaces operate and collaborate? 

 

Prescribed Reading: 

. Antoinette, Michelle, ‘A Space for ‘Asian-Australian’ art: Gallery 4A at the Asia-Australia Arts Centre’ in Journal of Australian Studies, Vol. 32, Issue 4, 531-524.

. Gralton, Beatrice et. al. “Curating Chinese Contemporary Art in an Australian context”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, vol. 16, no. 2 (2016): 247-271. 

 

Additional Readings:

. Zhang, Tian. ‘Between Asia and Australia: Curating Asian-Australian Identities at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art’, 4A Papers, issue 6, May 2019

. Jacqueline Lo, ‘Diaspora, Art and Empathy’, in The Bridge and the Fruit Tree: John Young - A survey, ed. Carolyn Barnes and Jacqueline Lo (Canberra: Australian National University Drill Hall Gallery, 2016), 19-43.

 

Week 3: 24 August 2021

Re-alignments: Asia in Triennials and Asian Triennials

This seminar explores the role Triennials have played in shaping the production and reception of contemporary Asian art. The lecture will examine regional developments, such as the roles Australia and Japan have variously played in spearheading and driving certain initiatives in the Asia-Pacific/Asia region (namely, the Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial and the Asia-Pacific-Triennial).

Discussion: What are some of the political, economic and cultural implications and issues raised in the readings? Discuss how the exhibition of contemporary Asian in such transnational spaces have shaped its production and reception, internationally and/or locally.

Prescribed Readings:

. Turner, Caroline. “Introduction: Internationalism and Regionalism: Paradoxes of Identity”, in Turner, Caroline, ed. Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1993), xii-xviii.

. Maravillas, Francis. “Cartographies of the Future: The Asia-Pacific Triennials and the Curatorial Imaginary,” in Clark, John, Peleggi, Maurizio, and Sabapathy, T.K., eds., Eye of the Beholder: Reception, Audience and Practice of Modern Asian Art, (Wild Peony, Sydney: 2006), 244-270.

 

Additional Readings:

. Turner, Caroline. “Introduction: Internationalism and Regionalism: Paradoxes of Identity”, in Turner, Caroline, ed. Tradition and Change: Contemporary Art of Asia and the Pacific (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1993), xii-xviii.

. Turner, Caroline. “Art Speaking for Humanity: The Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art,” Art Journal 59, no. 1 (2014): 16-19.

 

Week 4: 31 August 2022

Museums and Public Collections: Role of the Curator 

 

For this seminar, students will be provided with a number of case studies that examine the relationship between and across the role(s) of the curator and the State in mediating the processes of collection and display of contemporary art against the rise of globalisation and internationalism.

 

Discussion: Taking as its cue from Linda Nochlin, Patrick Flores asked why have there been no great curators outside of Europe and America? In the essay, he offers a curatorial history following the lives and works of two pioneering Southeast Asian curators, Jim Supangkat and Apinan Poshyananda, who have since become ‘lightning rods’ in the field of curation. What does this study reveal about the significance of curators in the production and reception of contemporary Asian art?  

 

Prescribed Reading: 

. Flores, Patrick D. “Place of Curation,” in Flores, Patrick D., Past Peripheral: Curation in Southeast Asia (Singapore: NUS Museum, 2008), 4-33.

. Lee, Weng Choy. “Anecdote and theme: reflections on curating contemporary art from Southeast Asia”, Art Monthly Australia no. 279 (May 2015): 32-41. 

 

Additional Readings:

. Wang, Peggy. “Art critics as middlemen: Navigating State and Market in Contemporary Chinese Art, 1980s-1990s,” Art Journal 72, no. 1 (2014): 6-19.

. Antoinette, Michelle. “Exhibiting Southeast Asian Difference: Global and Regional currents”, Cross/Cultures, vol. 178, no. 1 (2014): 157-236.

 

Week 5: 7 September 2021

Re-imagining Asia: National Gallery Singapore

 

Guest Lecture: Modernisms in relation: Curating the Reframing Modernism exhibition

Dr Phoebe Scott, Curator, National Gallery Singapore

 

This lecture will discuss the process of curating the exhibition Reframing Modernism: Painting from Southeast Asia, Europe and Beyond, held at the National Gallery Singapore in 2016. The exhibition was a collaboration between the National Gallery Singapore and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Its premise was to find a way to put modernism from the Centre Pompidou’s collection into dialogue with Southeast Asian modernism, without relying on the rigid stylistic frameworks or notions of “influence” which privilege modernism produced in the West. This lecture will contextualise Reframing Modernism within a recent history of exhibitions of Asian modernisms, as well as reflecting on the curatorial process that led to the exhibition’s final form.

 

Prescribed Reading: 

. Phoebe Scott and Horikawa Lisa. Introduction to Reframing Modernism, 10-17. Singapore: National Gallery Singapore, 2016.

. Mitter, Partha. “Decentering Modernism: Art History and Avant-Garde Art from the Periphery.” The Art Bulletin 90, No. 4 (December 2008): 531-548.

 

Additional reading

. Clark, John. “Introduction.” In Modern Asian Art, 11-27. Sydney: Craftsman House, 1998

 

Week 6: 14 September 2021 

Re-imagining Asia: Guggenheim and Japan’s Gutai 

 

This seminar will examine Guggenheim’s retrospective show on the Gutai that aimed to re-evaluate its role and contribution to the narrative of modernism in Japan and internationally. As it seeks to re-evaluate the experimentations of Gutai painters and their outdoor exhibitions, we will also consider the growing scholarship that has strove to show how the Gutai predated in its originality the changes in western art developments with the creation of genres such as installations, performance and land art.

 

Prescribed Reading: 

. Munroe, Alexandra. “To Challenge the Mid-Summer Sun: The Gutai Group,” Japanese art after 1945: scream against the sky (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994), 19-25

. Tiampo, Ming. Gutai: decentering modernism (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011) [select chapters].

 

Week 7: 21 September 2021

Private and Public Collections: Framing ‘China’ and ‘Chineseness’

 

This seminar continues off from the previous to explore the history and significance of collecting and exhibiting Chinese art. Students will be given the opportunity to examine two case-studies, a current White Rabbit Gallery exhibition and The China Project (2009) by Gallery of Modern Art, Queensland, that have shaped the narratives on contemporary Chinese art. 

 

Discussion: What narratives are told from the collection and from the curation of the collection? To what extent does the collection frame the curation of the exhibition (and vice versa)? What does the collecting of contemporary Asian art, in this case Chinese art, in public galleries reveal about international relations and cultural policies? On a similar note, how is the private collecting of contemporary Chinese art also reflective of global and state politics?

 

Prescribed Reading: 

. O’ Riordan, Maurice. “Spirited Moment Endures: The White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney” [online]. Art Monthly Australia, no. 223, (Sept 2009): 12-13.

. [Excerpts] The China Project, catalogue, (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 2009). 

 

Additional Readings:

. Smith, Terry, ed., Contemporary Art + Philanthropy: Pubic Spaces/Private Funding, Foundations for Contemporary Art, Sydney, UNSW Press in association with the Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation, 2009.

. Humphries, Oscar. “Made in China: Judith Neilson and her husband Kerr founded the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney, which displays Chinese art produced after the year 2000. She spoke to Apollo about why she wanted to share her collection.” Apollo, Nov. 2011, p. 30.

. Keenan, Elizabeth, The big bang : contemporary Chinese art from the White Rabbit Collection (Sydney: White Rabbit Gallery, 2010).  

 

MID SEMESTER BREAK 27 Sep -1 Oct 2021 

 

Week 8: 5 October 2021

Women re-modelling contemporary art worlds: Exhibitions and Projects

This week’s topic discusses the histories of women’s exhibitions in Asia within the broader context of feminist art history. Interest in the histories of women artists, particularly in Asia, is observed to be a relatively recent phenomenon. How did the topic “Women artists” gain salience over the years? What does the general absence of women artists in history imply about women’s participation in the modern and contemporary art discourses?

Discussion: In what ways have women-centred spaces and exhibitions presented new problems to female art practitioners? How do women’s work challenge political and personal gendered spaces? With reference to both readings, discuss how contemporary conditions facilitated the discourse of feminism and supported/hindered the production and reception of women’s art and practice.

Prescribed Reading: 

. Kee, Joan. “What is Feminist about Contemporary Asian Women’s Art?”, in Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (exh. cat.), Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, eds. (London and New York: Merrell Publishers and Brooklyn Museum, 2007) 107-121.

. Nair, Varsha. “Womanifesto: A biennial art exchange in Thailand”, Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia 3 (1): March 2019, 147-171.

 

Additional Readings:

. Low, Yvonne. “Women re-modelling art worlds: Exhibitions and Projects on Southeast Asian Women Artists (1990-2015),” The Journal of the Asian Arts Society of Australia 24, no. 4 (Dec 2015): 4-6.

. Reilly, Maura. “Introduction: Toward Transnational Feminisms”, in Global Feminisms: New Directions in Contemporary Art (exh. cat.), Maura Reilly and Linda Nochlin, eds.  (London and New York: Merrell Publishers and Brooklyn Museum, 2007) 15-46.

 

Week 9: 12 October 2021

The Digital turn: Interventions and Innovations in Feminist art history

This is a workshop that will give students the opportunity to use digital tools and methods to ask new research questions. Using a specific set of digitized archival materials, students may play with existing datasets on an integrated online application with the aim to identify patterns and/or gaps in research, and in the process learn to develop and design research questions about women’s networks, collection records, exhibition histories, and market trends, among others.

More details will be provided in due course.  

Week 10: 19 October 2021

Digital Methods in Museums: Site and Object 

 

Description: This seminar will explore the use of digital methods to foster research breakthroughs in scholarship and museum exhibitions. Drawing closely to the Xiangtangshan Caves Project and the Dunhuang Project, we will examine how 3D modelling for instance has variously opened up research into deeper insights to the history of Buddhist art in China, as well as consider the significance of the site and the object. 

 

Discussion: What is the significance of the ‘site’ in enabling the interpretation of the object? With close reference to specific projects, how has the use of digital methods to reconstruct the the site, serve to enable the reading and interpretation of the object in context and why is the goal of placing the object in the site crucial for our understanding of pre-modern art/artifacts?

 

Prescribed Readings:

Tsiang Katharine, "Bodhisattvas, jewels & demons: reconstructing meaning in the North Cave at Xiangtangshan", Apollo 167, no. 554 (2008): 36-41.

 

Additional Readings:

Tsiang, R. Katherine, and Powers, J. Martin, “Introduction” in Looking at Asian Art, eds. Katherine Tsiang and Martin Powers (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2012) 9-17. 

 

Week 11: 26 October 2021

University Museums: Collecting and Curating  

 

Guest lecture: Auspicious Motifs in Chinese Art 

Dr Shuxia Chen, Curator, China Gallery, Chau Chak Wing Museum, the University of Sydney

 

Description: This lecture will introduce some key objects and curatorial aspects of the inaugural exhibition at the China Gallery of Chau Chak Wing Museum.  Auspicious Motifs in Chinese Art explores the themes of fortune and prosperity that have long inspired in the arts of China. Drawing from three important local collections, this exhibition presents a range of key motifs, from gods, immortals and mythical creatures, to sacred animals and seasonal flora, as well as allusions to classic texts, folklore, ancient cosmology and numerology. Themes

of auspicious wishes connect the works across a spectrum of media, including bronze, ceramic, jade, wood, paper and glass. 

 

Discussion: What might a university gallery have to offer to the public and to the students? As noted in the reading by Pamela Frank, educational initiatives developed at the gallery can enhance and deepen a student’s engagement levels whilst at the same time generate meaningful research and scholarship around its collection. How can curatorial design (of objects) take into consideration the pedagogical needs of the students?

 

Prescribed Reading: 

. [Excerpt] Wen Fong, Images of the mind: Selections from the Edward L. Elliott family and John B. Elliott collections of Chinese calligraphy and painting at the Art Museum, Princeton University (Princeton, N.J.: Art Museum, Princeton University in association with Princeton University Press, c1984).

. Clark, John. “Building a collection: Chinese prints at the University of Sydney”, Floating Time, Chinese Prints, 1954-2002, (Sydney: Power Publications, 2016) 25-36.

 

Additional Readings:

. Ainger, Susanne. Guide to museums, galleries and collections at the University of Sydney (Sydney: University of Sydney, University News Service, 1989).

. Frank, Pamela. “A Twenty-First-Century Teaching Museum: The Expanded Yale University Art Gallery”, Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, Teaching with Art, (2013): 22-37. 

 

Week 12: 2 November 2021

Issues of Contemporaneity: Dislocation, Disillusionment and going “International”

This seminar examines the challenges of making and exhibiting contemporary art in relation to issues of contemporaneity. It will look at the themes of dislocation and disillusionment when considering the obstacles encountered by contemporary artists struggling to enter the international art circuit (especially those residing in provincial towns and villages). 

Discussion: How are the works by local artists viewed as culturally ‘outside’ when they become part of the international art circuit? In what way is international interest in Asian art imbricated within a larger arena of corporate globalization? Discuss this in relation to economic, political and cultural domination; refer closely to key arguments raised by the authors in the readings. 

Prescribed Reading: 

. Hancox, Simone. “Art, activism and the geopolitical imagination: Ai Weiwei’s ‘Sunflower Seeds’,” Journal of Media Practice 12, no. 3 (2012): 279-290. 

. Gao, Minglu. “Changing motivations of Chinese Contemporary art since the mid 1990s,” Journal of Visual Art Practice 11, no. 2-3 (2012): 209-219.

Additional Readings:

. Maravillas, Francis. “Constellations of the contemporary: Art/Asia/Australia,” Journal of Australian Studies 32, no. 4 (2008): 433-444. 

. Sambrani, Chaitanya. “Here, Out There (and Somewhere in Between): Contemporary Art in India,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art 3, no. 2 (2015): 55-76. 

. Supangkat, Jim. “Multiculturalism/Multimodernism,” in Apinan Poshyananda, et. al., Traditions/Tensions: Contemporary Art in Asia (New York: Asia Society Galleries, 1996), 70-81.

Week 13: 9 November 2021

 

A Coda: Collecting and Showing “Contemporary Asian Art”

This concluding seminar takes stock of all the issues discussed as they are related to the circulation, exhibition and collection of modern and contemporary Asian art both inside and outside of Asia. Museums and galleries in the West struggle to re-consider their acquisition policies and re-think existing collection models in a bid to close the gap in their knowledge of Asian of the past century and to catch up on its present and future developments. One of the problems they faced was the lack of expertise in the field of modern and contemporary Asian art. On the other hand, institutions within Asia have themselves begun building its own collection and developing art historical knowledges. 

Prescribed Readings:

. Chua, Kevin. “ Exhibiting Modern Asian Art in Southeast Art,” in Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art 13, no. 2 (March/April 2014): 105-116.

. Desai, Vishakha N. “Beyond the ‘Authentic-Exotic’: Collecting Contemporary Asian Art in the Twenty-First Century,” in Bruce Altshuler, ed., Collecting the New: Museums and Contemporary Art (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007), 103-114.

Background Readings:

. Bennett, Tony. “Exhibition, Difference and the Logic of Culture,” in Karp, Ivan et. al., eds., Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 46-69.

. Schoppert, Peter. “Asia in the 50th Venice Biennale of Art 2003”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (Aug 2006): 136-140.

. Clark, John. “Beyond the National, inside the Global” in Anderson, Jaynie, ed., Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration and Convergence [The Proceedings of the 32nd International Congress in the History of Art] (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2009), 58-59.

 

Please also refer to Canvas for the latest updates, including readings and resources.

Learning outcomes are what students know, understand and are able to do on completion of a unit of study. They are aligned with the University's graduate qualities and are assessed as part of the curriculum.

At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:

  • LO1. demonstrate a better understanding of major developments in modern and contemporary Asian art, both in and beyond Australia
  • LO2. demonstrate an appreciation for historical approaches to the curation of Asian art and greater awareness of curatorial strategies surrounding Asian art in relation to contemporary international art
  • LO3. analyse narratives of Asian art within the field of art history and the exhibitionary context
  • LO4. critically evaluate the impact of the institutionalisation of Asian art both inside and outside of Asia
  • LO5. effectively articulate a sophisticated interpretation of this cultural production both verbally and in writing.

Graduate qualities

The graduate qualities are the qualities and skills that all University of Sydney graduates must demonstrate on successful completion of an award course. As a future Sydney graduate, the set of qualities have been designed to equip you for the contemporary world.

GQ1 Depth of disciplinary expertise

Deep disciplinary expertise is the ability to integrate and rigorously apply knowledge, understanding and skills of a recognised discipline defined by scholarly activity, as well as familiarity with evolving practice of the discipline.

GQ2 Critical thinking and problem solving

Critical thinking and problem solving are the questioning of ideas, evidence and assumptions in order to propose and evaluate hypotheses or alternative arguments before formulating a conclusion or a solution to an identified problem.

GQ3 Oral and written communication

Effective communication, in both oral and written form, is the clear exchange of meaning in a manner that is appropriate to audience and context.

GQ4 Information and digital literacy

Information and digital literacy is the ability to locate, interpret, evaluate, manage, adapt, integrate, create and convey information using appropriate resources, tools and strategies.

GQ5 Inventiveness

Generating novel ideas and solutions.

GQ6 Cultural competence

Cultural Competence is the ability to actively, ethically, respectfully, and successfully engage across and between cultures. In the Australian context, this includes and celebrates Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, knowledge systems, and a mature understanding of contemporary issues.

GQ7 Interdisciplinary effectiveness

Interdisciplinary effectiveness is the integration and synthesis of multiple viewpoints and practices, working effectively across disciplinary boundaries.

GQ8 Integrated professional, ethical, and personal identity

An integrated professional, ethical and personal identity is understanding the interaction between one’s personal and professional selves in an ethical context.

GQ9 Influence

Engaging others in a process, idea or vision.

Outcome map

Learning outcomes Graduate qualities
GQ1 GQ2 GQ3 GQ4 GQ5 GQ6 GQ7 GQ8 GQ9

This section outlines changes made to this unit following staff and student reviews.

Changes have been made in accordance to remote-learning requirements.

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