COGN 150: Politics and Cultures of Display Spring 2012 Thurdays 9:30 AM - 12:20 PM Room: MCC133 Office Hours: Tues 10:30-noon Office: MCC 241  Professor: Brian Goldfarb email: bgoldfarbii@iiucsd.edu Communication Dept UCSD
Meetings		above: Guarded View (Fred Wilson, 1991) below: I Can't Imagine Ever Wanting to Be White  (Daniel Martinez, 1994)
Resources

course website: http://communication.ucsd.edu/goldfarb/cogn150f09/

Course Overview:

This senior seminar will be concerned with institutions and practices of public exhibition and display. Weekly readings, screenings and discussion topics will address historical and contemporary forms of display and their social, ethical, political and organizational dimensions. We will consider a range of examples of visual presentation including: exhibitions of art and artifacts, modes of commercial display (from store windows to billboards to runway), and the re-conceptualization of these as digital forms. Participants will also visit exhibitions and other sites of display that we will discuss in seminar. While focusing attention on critical analysis of practices of display as a site of research, the course will also consider alternative approaches to curatorial practice and engage participants in rethinking exhibition strategies.

Questions addressed include: How have museums and other institutions of display mediated relationships between among social, cultural and economic groups? What ethical challenges are presented by the representation of others? What are the interrelationships among public exhibition practices and commercial display?

Requirements

• Attendance is mandatory. Any unexcused absences will negatively impact your participation grade.
• Weekly readings (approx. 40-60 pages), film/video viewing (UCSD film library reserve) and visits to exhibitions and public display sites (TBA).
• Journals that thoughtfully present observations and reflections on the weekly readings and assigned field trips. You are required to turn in journals for 6 of the 9 weeks in which you are given prompts. Certain weeks (TBA) will be mandatory, and others you can select. Journals are due on Tuesdays at 6pm and late journals will not count.
• Each student will be responsible for preparing a set of questions/topics for discussion for one of the weeks based on reading or viewing assignments.
• A project that develops an original approach to using display to engage a chosen audience or set of constituencies (Guidelines will distributed and discussed in class). A one page-proposal for the paper/project is due in week 4. A first draft to be submitted by week 7. Final projects will be presented in weeks 9 and 10 and submitted by finals day.
  

Assessment

The main goals of this class are learning and preparation for research, as well as intellectual and creative work in the field. Grades are required by the university, but I hope of secondary concern. Participants will be graded based on attendance, participation, and completion of assignment, as follows:

• 30%: Attendance and participation (including class discussions and off site exhibition visits)
• 30% Journal entries (six--late journals will not be accepted) and preparation of discussion questions for one week.
• Final paper/project 40%

Attendance: is part of your grade. Absences and lateness in discussion sections are not acceptable as they constitute a core portion of the course. You must arrive to class and site visits on time. No sleeping or emailing / IMing / texting during seminar. No use of computers in class except for note taking – use of computers for other purposes will count as an absence.  We have only ten meetings, so for every unexcused absence your final grade will be reduced by a letter grade. Each tardy will result in a reduction by half a letter grade. Three unexcused absences will result in a failing grade. Please email me if you have an urgent concern and will need to be excused from a class; and in addition get a dated note from health services if you are too ill to attend class. Late submission of projects is not acceptable. For each day an assignment is late, the grade will be dropped by one letter grade. No incompletes will be given under any circumstances.

Disability Accommodations

The professor is dedicated to making this course as accessible to all students as possible. If you require accommodations for disabilities, please communicate with the Professor immediately and register with the Office of Students with Disabilities (OSD). This way we may make arrangements to fit your needs.

Texts

• Karp, Kratz, Swarja, and Ybarr-Frausto , eds, Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations
• Additional readings on e-reserves or on the ted course site
• Optional text: Bettina Carbonell, ed, Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts

Course Schedule:

Note: This set of weekly topics/readings is provisional and may change. You are responsible for checking the online syllabus weekly for updated reading assignments, as well as off site experiences (be sure to refresh your browser to see the most recent version): http://communication.ucsd.edu/goldfarb/cogn150s12/
Readings are due before the class each week.

week: 1  |  2  |  3  |  4  | 5  |  6  |  7  |  8  |  9  |  10

Week One (April 5):  Introduction

• Course overview
• Discussion of research topics/course projects
• Class visit Françoise Gilot's Exhibit at the Salk Institute, and the UAG exhibit ANOMALIA Curated by Lucía Sanromán
  

Week Two (April 12): Technologies of Representation and the Visualization of Modern Nations

• Before next week: View Isaac Julian's "Ten Thousand Waves" film installation at the downtown branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and save your ticket stub to turn in (http://www.mcasd.org/exhibitions/isaac-julien-ten-thousand-waves). Free for students unter 26 with ID. Hours are 11 AM – 5 PM daily, except closed on Wednesday. The Museum is free on the third Thursday of every month from 5-7 PM.For directions and location: http://www.mcasd.org/visit/driving-directions
• During class we will be visiting the current exhibition at the Geisel Library, Stitching Memories: The Story of African American Quilting,and having a discussion with Dorthea Stewart and Gayatri Singh who were central to conceiving an mounting the exhibition.

Read

• Benedict Anderson, "Census, Map, Museum" Chapter 10 in Imagined Communities
• Walter Benjamin, "A Small History of Photography,"
• Robert Smithson "Some Void Thoughts on Museums"

To Skim:

• Bella Dicks, Culture on Display, "Ch 1: A Culture of Display," p16-40 (Digital copy linked to library catalog--not e-reserves)
  

Week Three (April 19): Origins of the Museum

• James Clifford, "On Collecting Art and Culture"
• Charles Wilson Peale: To the Citizens of the United States
• Henrietta Lidchi, pp155-166 of "The Poetics and Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures" Ch 3 and associated readings A-E in Representation Stuart Hall et al

Optional Reading:

• Paula Findlen, "The Museum: It's Clasical Etymology and Renaissance Geneology" (MS 23-50)

Week Four (April 26): Representing Others, Representing Self: Ethnography and Struggles Over Display.
¿Meet at Chicano Park?

• Afranz Boaz, "Museums of Ethnology and Their Classifications" (MS 139-142)
• Curtis M Hinsley, "The World As Marketplace: Commodification of the Exotic at the World's columbian exposition, Chicago, 1893"

Optional Reading:

• Christopher Looby, "The Constitution of Nature: Taxonomy as Politics in Jefferson, Peale and Bartram" (MS 143-157)
• Fabrice Grognet "Ethnology: Science on Display" (MS 175-180)
• Zora Neale Hurston, "What White publishers Won't Print" (MS 216-219) also online: http://mahoganybooks.com/blog/2010/06/what-white-publishers-wont-print-by-zora-neale-hurston/
• Henrietta Lidchi, "The Poetics and Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures" Ch 3 and associated readings A-E in Representation Stuart Hall et al,
• Coco Fusco, "The Other History of Intercultural Performance"
• Screening: The couple in the cage [videorecording] : a Guatinaui odyssey
  

Week Five (May 3): Globalization and Display

• Gustavo Buntinx, "Communities of Sense/Communities of Sentiment: Globalization and the Museum Void in an Extreme Periphery" (MF 219-241)
• François Lionnet, "The Mirror and the Tomb: Africa, Museums, and Memory" (MS 92-102)
• Webb Keane, "Money is No Object: Materiality, Desire and Modernity in Indonesian Society"

Select one of the following to read as well:

• Gustavo Buntinx, "Communities of Sense/Communities of Sentiment: Globalization and the Museum Void in an Extreme Periphery" (MF 219-241)
• W. J. T. Mitchell, "World Pictures: Globalization And Visual Culture"
• Holiday Dmitri, "Barbie’s Taiwanese Homecoming"

Week Six (May 10): Online Commerce and Pedestrian Archives

• Zoe Trodd, "Reading Ebay: Hidden Stores, Subjective Stories, and a People's History of the Archive"
• Daniel Mudie Cunningham, "Ebay and the Traveling Museum: Elvis Richardson's Slide Show Land"
  

Week Seven (May 17): Ability and Access to Exhibitions and Commercial Display                

• Richard Sandell, "Displaying Difference: Revealing and Interpreting the Hidden History of Disability"
• Wendy Constantine, "Museums and the ‘Digital Curb Cut’" http://www.museotech.com/?page_id=28  

Optional Reading:

• Seeing beyond Sight: Photos by Blind Teenagers http://www.seeingbeyondsight.org/links/index.htm
• Geoffrey Swan, Teresa Meade, J. Douglass Klein,  and David Serlin, "Licking Disability: Reflections on the Politics of Postage Stamps"
• David Serlin, "Making Disability Public: An Interview with Katherine Ott"
• Blind at the Museum (Exhibition notes)   
• Jocelyn Dodd, Richard Sandell, Debbie Jolly and Ceri Jones, "Rethinking Disability Representation in Museums and Galleries"
• Diane F. Britton, Barbara Floyd, and Patricia A. Murphy, "Overcoming Another Obstacle: Archiving a Community’s Disabled History"
• Amanda Kyser Bryan, "New Museum Theory In Practice: A Case Study Of The American Visionary Art Museum And The Representation Of Disability"
• Rosemarie Garland Thomson, "Dares to Stares: Disable Women Performance Artists & the Dynamics of Staring," Bodies in Commotion, Eds, Carrie Sandall and Philip Auslander (30-41)
• David Hevey, "Ch3: Into the Grotto of Charity Advertising," (pp 18-29), and "Ch4: Out of the Grotto," (pp 30-52), The Creatures Time Forgot "

Week Eight (May 24): Interpretation and Museum Education |  Difficult Displays and Exhibits

• Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, "Exhibitions and Interpretation: Museum Pedagogy and Cultural Change"
• Bonnell J. and Simon, R. L. (2007 July). "'Difficult' Exhibitions and Intimate Encounters". Museum and Society, 5(2): 65-85.

  Optional Reading:

• Tony Bennet, "Speaking to the Eyes," Ch 2 in The Politics of Display, ed, Sharon MacDonald
• Gretchen Jennings and Maureen McConnell, "The Unexhibitable: A Conversation" (PDF)

Exhibit Proposal Examples/Guides

• 10 steps to Curating a Show
• How to Write an Exhibit Proposal http://artexplainer.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/how-to-write-exhibition-proposal-for-art-galleries/
• Chaca Design http://www.chacha.co.uk/vebo/showcase_exhibition
• The Baboon Exhibit http://www.oocities.org/dasart/baboon/index.htm.tmp
• The PRayer Room Project http://vimeo.com/21140835 and http://muslimlifeamerica.blogspot.com/
• Skin Deep Exhibit http://www.skindeepexhibition.blogspot.com/
• Outside the Norm Exhibit http://www.curatoriallab.com/elias-saoud.html
• Singapore Dada Exhibit http://issuu.com/bryangelo/docs/singapore_dada
• Kim Ritters http://www.kimritter.com/weblog/?page_id=60
• 
  

Week Nine (May 31): Human Rights

• Terence Duffy "Museums of 'Human Suffering' and the Struggle for Human Rights" (MS 117-122)
• Leslie Witz, "Transforming Museums on Postapartheid Tourist Routes" (MF 107-134)
• Ingrid Muan, "Musings on Museums from Phom Penh" (MF 257-279)

Week Ten (June 7): Historical Displays and the Politics of Memory

• Thomas Gieryn, "Balancing Acts: Science, Enola Gay, and History Wars at The Smithsonian" Ch 12 in The Politics of Display, ed, Sharon MacDonald
• Richard Sandell, "Purpose, media and message: The St. Mungo museum of religious life and art and the Anne Frank House"- Chapter 3 from Museums, prejudice and the reframing of difference (e-reserves)

Optional Reading:

• Ciraj Rassol, "Community Museums, Memory Politics, and Social Transformation in South Africa: History Possibilities, and Limits" (MF 286-321)
• Lisa Corrin, "Mining the Museum" (MS 381-397)
• François Lionnet, "The Mirror and the Tomb: Africa, Museums, and Memory" (MS 92-102)

Finals Week: FINAL Paper/Project due on

Plans for Field Trips and Site Visits will be discussed in class. Some possible destinations:

• Balboa Park Museums: SD Museum of Art, Museum of Man, Mingei Museum, Natural History Museum, Museum of Photographic Art, World Beat Center, El Centro Cultural de la Raza
• San Dieog Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla
• Chicano Murals in Cesar Chavez Park
• A Mall
• The Zoo
• Los Angeles: Museum of Jurassic Technology, LA MOCA, LACMA

Alternative Weekly Topics:

Technology and Forms of Exhibition Interaction

• Vom Lehn andHeatha and Hindmarsh, "Rethinking Interactivity" (PDF)
• Sandifer, "Time-Based Behaviors at Interactive Science Museum (PDF)
• Spasojevic and Kindberg, "Augmented Museum Experience" (PDF)
• Andrew Barry, "On Inteactivity," Ch 6 in The Politics of Display, ed, Sharon MacDonald (e-reserve under MacDonald.)

Tactics of Display

Some Exhibition/Museum resources

• Blacks in Wax Museum
• American Dime Museum
• Museum of Jurassic Technology
• Mutter Museum
• American Visionary Art Museum