Call for Papers - Emerging Research on Reciprocal Learning across Art Institutions: Futures of Transcultural Knowing

Emerging Research on Reciprocal Learning across Art Institutions: Futures of Transcultural Knowing

Location: Hybrid event - online and on-site at the Dresden State Art Collections (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden/SKD), Dresden, Germany in the framework of the second edition of the Transcultural Academy organised at the Japanese Palace.
Organized by the Worlding Public Cultures team of Heidelberg University

As part of the international Academy, ‘Lessons Learned? Transcultural Positions in Curating and Pedagogies’ (For more information about the Academy, please see below), the hybrid panel discussion ‘Futures of Transcultural Knowing: Emerging Research on Reciprocal Learning across Art Institutions’ invites emerging scholars, curators and educators whose work and research focuses on the intersection of art and pedagogy. This session particularly welcomes presentations about independent curatorial and pedagogical projects, as well as research and case studies from institutional contexts, which shed light on the successes and shortcomings of reciprocal learning between academic and cultural institutions.
The session is interested in how emerging scholarship and professional initiatives address the intersections of art historical pedagogies (primarily as taught in academic settings) and pedagogical and curatorial practices in museums and beyond. What are examples of existing initiatives that illuminate how we can open up and shape spaces for encounters of reciprocal learning to better enable transnationally, transculturally, or ‘worlded’ forms of knowing? How can innovative pedagogical approaches create new spaces for audiences to learn from – and across – the expertise of museums and universities?

The session invites presentations of 10 minutes each followed by a discussion. The presentations and discussions will be in English. There will also be an opportunity to summarize the discussions in the form of a blog post on the WPC website blog (https://www.worldingcultures.org/) after the Academy. At the end of the Academy, emerging scholars and professionals are invited to meet with the WPC team for a reflection session to debrief and share their experiences of the Academy.

About the Academy:
The international Academy, ‘Lessons Learned? Transcultural Positions in Curating and Pedagogies’, explores the successes and failures of existing pedagogical practices in museums, and potentials for new transcultural and ‘worlded’ approaches. Conceptualized by Heidelberg University’s team of the international research project, ‘Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation’, this Academy will unfold as a three day series of on-site and virtual discussions, excursions and exhibition visits around the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) from the 14-16 July 2022. The SKD museums hold amongst the most important and expansive present-day collections in Germany. They speak to histories of transcultural collecting and conservation in Germany since the 16th century. Later in 2022, SKD will hold a ‘Transcultural Academy’ at the Japanese Palace to rethink curatorial presentations, and audience engagement via an artist residency programme. Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (BKM), this aims to rethink and reflect upon the role of ethnographic collections in the context of current debates around decolonization.

‘Worlding Public Cultures: The Arts and Social Innovation’ is funded by a Social Innovation Grant from the Trans-Atlantic Platform for the Social Sciences and Humanities and (within Germany) by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (DLR Project Management Agency). Partner institutions and networks are Transnational and Transcultural Arts and Culture Exchange (TrACE), the University of the Arts London (UK), Carleton University (Canada), Concordia University (Canada), the University of Montreal (Canada), the University of Quebec in Montreal (Canada), Heidelberg University (Germany), the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands) and Vrije Universitet Amsterdam (Netherlands).

Requirements

We welcome contributions and case studies from or about museum-university collaborations and/or successful pedagogical models beyond institutions that address one or several of the following questions:

• What are innovative forms of transnationally, transculturally, or ‘worlded’ pedagogical learning in and through networks between, for example, universities and other art-related institutions such as museums?
• What does the concept of pedagogy entail in this nexus? How can it be re-imagined? How has it thus far been re-imagined?
• How can we learn/unlearn art and visual practices in ‘worlded’ ways? How can emerging ideas be incorporated into teaching and showing practices?
• How can art institutions work together to enable situating formerly and continuously excluded, suppressed or ‘othered’ ways of knowing?

The sessions will take on a hybrid format, with select participants on-site in Dresden and others virtually present online. There are a limited number of travel grants available for participation in this panel in person. If you wish to apply for such a grant and attend in person, please indicate this in your submission along with details of your current place of residence.

Please send your abstract (max. 300 words) and a short professional biography (max. 300 words) to Moritz Schwörer (moritz.schwoerer@hcts.uni-heidelberg.de) by 22 May 2022.