October 20, 2023
Editorial Note
The Stedelijk Studies Journal is a scholarly reviewed, Open Access publication supported by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. The Journal facilitates the research branch of Stedelijk Studies which aims to be a publishing platform for scholarship within and around the museum.
Alongside the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam’s Badkuip (Bathtub) Lecture series, given on 21 October 2023 by the multimedia artist Kader Attia, the Stedelijk Studies is pleased to preview the forthcoming Issue 13 “Museum-ing: Research in Practice,” guest edited by Dr. Anna-Maria Pinaka (AKV|St. Joost ) and Dr. Kitty Zijlmans (Prof. Emeritus, Leiden University).
Museum-ing focuses on the transformations underway currently in the museum world: how to be with and in a museum space, an experiencing public, a researching artist, an interrogating subject. The selected, global perspectives of (emerging) research artists and scholars presented in the forthcoming issue address the concepts from exposing the structures, institutional or otherwise, to a more fluid openness to movement of space, connection, and care.
In line with issue 13 “Museum-ing in Practice”, Kader Attia’s talk during the Bathtub lecture focusses on how to be with objects, notions of time and slowing down. Professor Victoria Walsh, Head of the Curating Contemporary Art Program at the Royal College of Art in London has agreed to be a respondent.
In an excerpt from our forthcoming issue editorial, Dr. Zijlmans highlights the ideas and questions the upcoming issue poses for museum, research, and artistic practices.
I think what we are confronted with is the idea that the museum for a long time has been seen as an institution which has a fixed place and a fixed format. Even if it is fluid within the format of a museum, it is collecting, it is presenting, it does research, and all those kinds of things.
And I think we are now in a period that the museum as an institution is criticized and challenged because of, I think, at least two things. One is the idea that the museum is still formed or based on a format that is basically North Atlantic. I use here the term derived from James Elkins in his latest and final book (The End of Diversity in Art Historical Writing (De Gruyter: Berlin/Boston 2021). There, he says, whereas contemporary art is changing around the world rapidly, the format of the writing of art history isn’t changing because it is still in one dominant format: of the writing of art history, which started in a North Atlantic paradigm. The same parallel can, I think, be seen within the museum because it is a parallel discussion and a parallel development. The museum has been very much in tandem, if not totally intertwined, with what has become art historical writing, and initially, museums followed very much the art historical canon.
So what you see happening is that the institution of art history, and the institution of the museum, are in tandem, are like twins. They may change within, and they may be critical about themselves and see themselves as far too Eurocentric now— basically, when you really look at the format and the institutional ground, it is still very much something that had its origin in the North Atlantic paradigm.
This whole idea of the institution is challenged, and if we really want to have museums that are places where we can learn and encounter the world, something needs to change radically.
We don’t get there by just adding some interesting artists from elsewhere into the canon because the whole idea of a canon is something that is under fire. Therefore, making the word ‘museum’ into a verb is something that might open possibilities to see where change can occur. ‘Museuming’ is doing something. Of course, with keeping the idea that you collect and present, but also reaching out to audiences and getting far more artistic practices within; thus, slowly changing the whole format of what a museum actually is and what it is for. The problem is that we are confronted with so much in-depth institutional structures that you cannot just change them or throw them overboard entirely, but you can make them clear and try to find answers there.
The other thing concerns the question, how can we open this up and make a museum more into something you do, that does, rather than something that is? I want to stress the importance of this because I see the same parallel in art historical writing, and that is changing only slowly. We need impetus from ‘elsewhere’ (Okwui Enwezor’s term)—wherever elsewhere is. It could be in the Netherlands, it could be from far away, it could be rethinking, or maybe other disciplines.
And crucial for me is, what do artists do? How can artists contribute to this change of what a museum can be? I hope that this issue shows at least some ways to proceed.
We look forward to presenting Issue 13 to you. Essays will be published on a rolling basis from 26 October 2023 onwards.
The Editorial Team, Stedelijk Studies
