Elena Stylianou

Broadening Museum Pedagogy

Artists have been increasingly interested in looking at and investigating the museum, influenced by the museum’s changing role as well as the diverse and alternative directions that art has taken over the last century (McShine, 1999; Rice, 2003; Gibbons, 2007).

Editorial: Photography, artists and museums

This special issue of Photographies is dedicated to the intricate relationship between photography and museums. More specifically, it focuses on artistic practices that use photography to challenge the theoretical complexities of this relationship. The featured papers of this issue examine what happens when artists turn their lens on such museum practices as collecting, archiving, exhibiting and interpreting. Moreover, they investigate how artists negotiate the concept of the museum, its practices and visitors through their photographic work, and the ways in which they often adopt a curatorial position by using real and/or fictional photographic archives. The papers in this issue were selected from the 2nd International Conference of Photography and Theory, which took place in 2012 at the Thalassa Museum in Agia Napa, Cyprus. The International Conference of Photography and Theory (ICPT) is a biannual conference, which takes place in Cyprus and was originally created as a response to expanding research in historical, artistic and vernacular photography. It aims to provide an outlet for an interdisciplinary and critical theoretical exploration of photography and photographic practices. The theme of the 2nd ICPT was “Photography and Museums” and aimed to critically investigate the diverse relationships between photography and museums. Photography obviously has a long and complex relationship with the museum as well as different functions within and outside its walls. To begin with, photography is displayed in museums as an autonomous artefact or an art form demanding aesthetic consideration. Additionally, photography has been historically adopted by various types of museums — anthropological, historical, archaeological, science etc. — as evidence for the objects on view or as supporting documents to events, stories or other artefacts already on display. Furthermore, museums use photography as a tool for documenting, archiving and facilitating museum practices, and for self-promotion. Finally, visitor photography of museum collections, interiors, exteriors and even of other visitors — often circulating online through social media — has expanded the dissemination of museum images. Despite the close relationship and interdependency of museums and photography, there is limited research that examines the roles that photography plays in the formation of cultural, historic or social narratives inside museums. In addition, museums, and also contemporary artists, have been showing a renewed interest in photography and its potential to challenge museum orthodoxy, as well as in the medium’s expanding possibilities through the use of new media technologies. ICPT 2012 explored the import of photography on the nature and character of the museum, the relationship between photography and the museum experience, as well as the impact of the institution on the status and development of photography. The call

Artists’ Photographic Reflections: Imag(in)ing the Art Museum through Fictional Narratives

This paper examines how artists employ photography to investigate and challenge the museum. It makes particular reference to the work of three women artists: Louise Lawler, Sophie Calle and Diane Neumaier. Their work is discussed with reference to the concept of the fictional and the ways in which photography can function as a frame within which museum hegemony, the viewing experience and art’s commodification are questioned. Finally, digital photography and online manifestations of imaginary institutions are considered, suggesting that perhaps a new virtual frame emerges for the production of fictions that allows us to reimagine both photography and the museum.

Bastard culture! How user participation transforms cultural production

From the blue tinted black-and-white photograph on the jacket, a round, seated man looks seriously over his right shoulder at us, his eyebrows raised. He has short hair, metal-frame glasses, and a bushy moustache. He wears an early twentieth-century worker’s long canvas coat. His right hand holds a paintbrush. Between man and easel, a magnifying glass focuses on a Madonna and child painting, about 2’ x 1’, perhaps a fifteenth–sixteenth-century Flemish ‘Primitive’. Under the man is the title, Art Forgery: The History of a Modern Obsession. Does his looking over his shoulder make him seem, ‘caught in the act’? On page 246 we learn he is Josef van der Vekken, authenticator, restorer, artist, and forger. Despite this wonderful cover, this is not a ‘spot the fakes’ book. Author Thierry Lenain, through discourse analysis, takes the reader through a history of the changing reception of fakes.

Parallel texts: Interviews and interventions about art

participants addressed during their discussions about their photographs. Additionally, there are three in-depth case studies exploring the photographic narratives of the three research participants the author felt most strongly exemplified meaningful themes emerging from the study. In the case study chapters, the author provides participant photographs juxtaposed with interview excerpts, or what she refers to as narrative threads, as data exemplars.