The once distinct roles of artist and curator have blurred dramatically in recent decades owing to a blending process in both directions, which has led to a turn towards the concept of the curator as producer and author, and the development of the hybridised figure of the ‘artist-curator’. Within my practice-based curatorial research at Meter Room and Grey Area, the 'artist-run space', as both form and content of space, is used as a critical framework for artist-curatorship. Artist-run spaces play a significant role in the cultural ecology of the UK, and this project explores the power relations involved in the production, distribution, and consumption of work within the field, in terms of both a cause and effect of a contested relationship with institutions and commercial galleries. Artist-run spaces are initiated for a number of reasons, but this project specifically focuses upon those spaces that identify with terms such as ‘independent’, 'alternative', ‘not-for-profit’, ‘DIY’, ‘self-organised’, and ‘critically engaged’. Using strategies for the development of a critical practice, such as Chantal Mouffe’s theories on ‘counter-hegemony’ and ‘agonistic space’ (2007), and Gerald Raunig's concept of 'instituent practice' (2009), this project explores how curatorial practices within artist-curator-run spaces might offer different ways of working, and be used to contest hegemonic structures within the field. I explore the role of critique within curatorial practice, specifically in relation to the struggle for autonomy, the production of subjectivity, and strategies for negating or resisting cooption by the New Institutions of post-Fordist neoliberalism. Three curatorial strategies were developed from experimental projects at both spaces, and then explored at Meter Room over a 2-year period. These strategies sought to occupy institutional structures in new ways: through the re-functioning of 'void' space, blending studio and gallery functions within a Curatorial Studio, developing a paracuratorial practice referred to as Caretaking, and re-approaching the concept of a collection-based institution through processes of layering works and their vestiges within an Artist-run Collection. The practice-based research culminated in a 5-month durational project in collaboration with five other artist-run spaces based in the West Midlands region, which explored a strategy for the creation of a new speculative artist-run institution as a dialogical process of instituting values through a critical curatorial practice.

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The history of collection at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, illustrates concepts of race in the development of museums in Canada from before Confederation to today. Located at intersections of Art History, Museology, Postcolonial Studies and Native Studies, this thesis uses discourse theory to trouble definitions of nation and problematize them as inherently racial constructs wherein 'Canadianness' is institutionalized as a dominant white, Euro-Canadian discourse that mediates belonging. The recent reinstallations of the permanent Canadian historical art galleries at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts are significant in their illustration of contemporary colonial collection practices. The effectiveness of each installation is discussed in relation to the demands and resistances raised by Indigenous and non-Native artists and cultural professionals over the last 40 years, against racist treatment of Indigenous arts.

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This thesis compares two contemporary artists who practice institutional criticism, Marcel Broodthaers and Fred Wilson. Looking specifically at Broodthaers's fictional museum project the Musee d Art Moderne, Departement des Aigles from 1968-1972 and Wilson's 1992 installation Mining the Museum at the Maryland Historical Society, this thesis will critically analyze each artist's similar application of deconstruction as a method. Both artists employ allegory and history as aesthetic strategies of deconstruction; using allegorical structure, the artists mobilize objects that have been arrested in history, disrupting a historical continuum that would otherwise remain foreclosed. The focus of this study will be to explore the critical approaches of Broodthaers and Wilson individually as well as the similar theoretical tendencies of the artists jointly; this investigation will assess the effect of institutional criticism on the museum's present condition, unfolding both what has changed and what is still at play within this practice.

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This thesis examines the use of design in the construction of Poland's national identity at the international exhibitions in the Cold War period. It is the first comprehensive study of Polish design discourse in any language that rests at the crossroads of design studies and cultural history. Based on original archival material, both written and visual, and oral interviews this thesis tracks the process of construction of Imagined Poland alongside the development of the design discipline during the three post-war decades. It charts the trajectory of these two narratives and examines their critical reception. In doing so this research casts new light on the relationship between design and political history in the Cold War Europe. However, it is not a thesis about designed objects or spaces per se, but rather about their discursive qualities and the way that they were put in work to narrate the nation. Versatile and embedded in the cultural, economic and social contexts, design understand here in its broadest sense proved to be well suited to this role: it allowed political authorities, trade representatives and creative intelligentsia to address timely issues on their agendas. This thesis closely examines eight exhibitions organised in the Soviet Union, Italy, Belgium and Poland. The narratives of these events, as the thesis argues, reflected the state's changing self-understanding towards international public opinion. It indicates that although Polish exhibitions were occasionally adjusted to the particular location, their themes were largely shaped in response to the political developments at home and in the Eastern Europe. By using exhibitions as a framework, this thesis offers a new perspective to study Polish international modernism and suggests a limited impact of ideology on the development of professional networks. Subsequently it provides a nuanced reading of Poland's relationship with the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc and the rest of Europe beyond reductive paradigm of totalitarianism.

Orientador : Maria Margaret Lopes / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Geociencias / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-04T02:34:20Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Heizer_AldaLucia_D.pdf: 6141642 bytes, checksum: 0983ba3a2e79903ed8c65ba8fac199e2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / Resumo: A presente pesquisa tem por finalidade contribuir para a História das Grandes Exposições da segunda metade do século XIX, sublinhando a participação do Império do Brasil nesses grandes eventos, em particular na Exposição Universal de Paris de 1889. Consideramos possível, ao analisar os catálogos de instrumentos científicos, relatórios, memórias, revistas científicas, entre outras fontes, identificar pistas que nos revelam que o Império do Brasil pretendia desfazer a imagem de flor exótica nos trópicos. A partir da constatação de que os trabalhos acadêmicos realizados no Brasil sobre estes grandes eventos, dos anos de 1980 para cá, não se ocuparam da participação dos países da América Latina, este trabalho pretende se desenvolver na confluência de linhas de pesquisa que, embora plenamente articuláveis, permanecem, até hoje, em grande parte dissociadas na produção historiográfica nacional. Trata-se de pesquisas em História das Exposições Universais e a História dos Instrumentos Científicos / Abstract: This present research has the purpose to contribute for the history of the Great Expositions of the second half of the XIX century, underlining the participation of the Brazilian Empire on these events, in particular in the Paris Universal Exposition in 1889. We found it possible, when analyzing the scientific instrument¿s catalogues, reports, memories, scientific magazines, among other sources, to identify tracks that reveal to us that the Brazilian Empire intended to appear under the image of the ¿Exotic flower of the tropics¿. After discover that the academic works that were made in Brazil about these great events, from 1980 until today, disregard the participation of the Latin American countries, this work intend to be developed in the confluence of the lines of research , although they can be articulated, remains until today dissociated in the national history production. It¿s about research on the history of the Great Universal Expositions and the History of Scientific Instruments / Doutorado / Doutor em Ensino e História de Ciências da Terra