Marstine Janet - Critical Practice: Artists, Museums, Ethics

Critical Practice is an ambitious work that blurs the boundaries between art history, museum studies, political science and applied ethics. Marstine demonstrates how convergences between institutional critique and socially engaged practice, as represented by the term critical practice, can create conditions for organisational change, particularly facilitating increased public agency and shared authority. The book analyses a range of museum interventions exploring such subjects as the ethical stewardship of collections, hybridity as a methodological approach to social justice and alternative forms of democracy. Discussing critical practice within the framework of peace and reconciliation studies, Marstine shows how artists interventions can redress exclusions, inequalities and relational frictions between museums and their publics.

Elucidating the museological and ethical implications of institutional critique and socially engaged practice, Marstine has provided a timely and thoughtful resource for museum studies scholars, artists, museum professionals, art historians and graduate students worldwide who are interested in mapping and unpacking the intricate relationships among artists, museums and communities.

Janet Marstine is Academic Director of the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester. She is the co-editor of New Directions in Museum Ethics (2012) and editor of The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics (2011) and New Museum Theory and Practice: An Introduction (2005).

Series Editors: Richard Sandell and Christina Kreps

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

Museums have undergone enormous changes in recent decades; an ongoing process of renewal and transformation bringing with it changes in priority, practice and role as well as new expectations, philosophies, imperatives and tensions that continue to attract attention from those working in, and drawing upon, wide-ranging disciplines.

Museum Meanings presents new research that explores diverse aspects of the shifting social, cultural and political significance of museums and their agency beyond, as well as within, the cultural sphere. Interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and international perspectives and empirical investigation are brought to bear on the exploration of museums relationships with their various publics (and analysis of the ways in which museums shape and are shaped by such interactions).

Theoretical perspectives might be drawn from anthropology, cultural studies, art and art history, learning and communication, media studies, architecture and design and material culture studies amongst others. Museums are understood very broadly to include art galleries, historic sites and other cultural heritage institutions as are their relationships with diverse constituencies.

The focus on the relationship of the museum to its publics shifts the emphasis from objects and collections and the study of museums as text to studies grounded in the analysis of bodies and sites; identities and communities; ethics, moralities and politics.

Museums, Society, Inequality

Edited by Richard Sandell

Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

Museum, Media, Message

Edited by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

Learning in the Museum

George Hein

Colonialism and the Object

Empire, Material Culture and the Museum

Edited by Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn

First published 2017 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 J. Marstine

The right of Janet Marstine to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Names: Marstine, Janet, author.
Title: Critical practice : artists, museums, ethics / Janet Marstine.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Museum meanings | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016033832 | ISBN 9780415658546 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780415658560 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Artists and museums. | Art and social action. | Art museums and
community.
Classification: LCC N72.A76 M29 2017 | DDC 708dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016033832

ISBN: 978-0-415-65854-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-65856-0 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-27201-6 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For Clay

Janet Marstines timely new book traces the evolution of Institutional Critique and the emergence of socially engaged artists practices, examining how they interact with the imperatives of public galleries and museums. Refreshingly, Marstine does not dodge the thorny ethical questions that inevitably arise when artists work and play with others. Critical Practice boldly engages with issues of care, authorship, conflict and reconciliation in the context of sometimes painful and often significant changes in habits, practices and policy that artworks produce.

Neil Cummings, Chelsea College of Arts London, UK

Generous support from the College of Arts, Humanities and Law and the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester has enabled me to carry out this project. I am also grateful for the help of colleagues in the School of Museum Studies, particularly Suzanne MacLeod, Simon Knell and Sandra Dudley, and current and former PhD students Laura Diaz Ramos, Catharina Hendrick, Alex Woodall, Amy Hetherington and Sipei Lu. I thank Matthew Gibbons, Amy Davis-Pointer and Lola Harre at Routledge for their guidance and Bruce Altshuler and Chris Whitehead for their thoughtful reviews of the book proposal. Series editors Richard Sandell and Christina Kreps played key roles in the development of the project and were inspirational mentors throughout.

My sincere appreciation goes to the many artists, curators, museum directors, educators, archivists and collectors who generously allowed me to interview them for my research. These include Allison Agsten, Mark Allen, Michael Asher, Lisa Ann Auerbach, Defne Ayas, Christiane Berndes, Jose Blondet, Layla Bloom, Sabine Breitwieser, Isolde Brielmaier, Gary Carrion-Murayari, Boo Chapple, Elizabeth Cline, Matt Coolidge, Neil Cummings, Kat Dempsey, Douglas Eklund, David Eng, Charles Esche, Walter Evans, Alex Farquharson, Robert Fontenot, Diana Franssen, Andrea Fraser, Amira Gad, Theaster Gates, Liam Gillick, Jessica Gogan, Rita Gonzales, Pablo Helguera, Amber Hickey, Maria Hlavajova, Anke Hoffman, Pete James, Omar Kholeif, Ethan Lasser, Goshka Macuga, Michaela Melian, Nick Merriman, Vlad Morariu, Marguerite Nugent, Bharti Parmar, Christiane Paul, Emily Pethick, Jonathan Prown, Dorothee Richter, Dieter Roelstraete, Jay Sanders, Abby Sheehan, Eric Shiner, Nancy Spector, John Smith, Matt Smith, Stephanie Smith, Anthony Spira, Jonas Staal, Joanna Szupinska, Simon Taylor, Steven ten Thije, Nato Thompson, Tom Trevor, David van der Leer, The Vacuum Cleaner, Tresa Varner, Matias Viegener, Jonathan Watkins, David Wilson, Fred Wilson, Bedwyr Williams, Matt Wrbican, Sue Yank, Carey Young and Lynn Zelevansky.