For the past three years the University Museum of Contemporary Art has collaborated with the Department of Art, Art History and Architecture to offer a spring workshop to undergraduate and graduate students interested in pursuing a museum career. The Roundtable has presented different aspects of museum work such as curatorial, conservation, or education. It provides an important overview of career options, training, and challenges of museum and gallery work. Experts from the museum world are invited to UMass to participate in a panel discussion, giving immediate hands-on information on the specific nature of their jobs and offering real life experiences. The Roundtable series at the University Museum of Contemporary Art represents a vanguard trend in universities and colleges offering insider professional information to students. This event is free and open to the public.
This year's panel "In Whose Voice?" focuses on the increasingly significant shift that is occurring away from the didactic model of curating towards a more inclusive model. This panel will examine the (multi-)cultural, editorial, contextual challenges museums face in order to appropriately exhibit works of art and to create a platform for genuine dialogue between the artist and the curator, and between the curator and other cultures.
We have extended invitations to Susan Vogel, Matthew Higgs, and Hamza Walker.
Susan Vogel, a professor in the Dept. of Art and Archeology at Columbia University, is internationally recognized as a curator, filmmaker, and African art expert. She has held the positions of curator for the African collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; founding Director of the Museum for African Art; and Director of the Yale University Art Gallery. Her last book BAULE: African Art/Western Eyes has been translated into French and received the Herskovits Prize, the African Studies Association's highest honor for a book of original research on Africa. Vogel's research charts a new course by examining issues of representation and display seldom raised by previous museum curators. Her central thesis is that the Western idea of "art" as something created for its own sake does not exist among the cultures of Africa, where art objects are animate presences indistinguishable from persons, spirits, and certain prosaic things.
Hamza Walker is Associate Curator of The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago - one of the premiere non-collecting museums devoted to contemporary art. He has written articles and reviews for such publications as Trans, New Art Examiner, Parkett and Artforum; has served on numerous panels, nationally and internationally; and is the recipient of the 1999 Norton Curatorial Grant, the Menil Collection's 2004 Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial Achievement, and the 2006 Emily Burton Tremaine Curatorial Award. Walker is known not only for his innovative curatorial work but also for his wide-ranging thinking and writing about contemporary art. The New York Times called him a “rising star" and “one of the museum world's most talented essayists". He has said that he wants his exhibitions to “function critically," commenting on “how we live now."
Matthew Higgs is director of White Columns Gallery, one of the first artist-run spaces in NY. From 2001 to 2004 he was Curator at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco. Prior to that, he was an Associate Director of Exhibitions at the ICA, London. Since 1992 Higgs has organized more than 100 exhibitions and projects with artists. He has contributed essays and interviews to more than 50 publications and art magazines including Artforum, Frieze, Art Monthly and Afterall. He is also a practicing artist, represented by Murray Guy Gallery in NY, and an adjunct curator at the Hessel Museum at Bard College's Center for Curatorial Studies.
As with the first three Roundtables, our goal is to create a forum for discussion where students, faculty, alumni, museum professionals, and the general public can exchange thoughts and knowledge about pressing issues in today's art world. This Roundtable offers one of the few opportunities at UMass and the Five-Colleges for students from different departments and disciplines to co-mingle and share in a rich dialogue.
In addition, the high profile and national reputation of our invited speakers will undoubtedly attract an audience of museum and art professionals from our region, as well as interested alumni.
With special thanks for supporting this event:
Massachusetts Cultural Council
At UMass: University Museum of Contemporary Art; Program in Art History; Alumni Association; Arts Council; Afro-American Studies Program; Dean of the Graduate School; Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement
Five College Lecture Fund
Mead Museum, Amherst College
Smith College Art History Department
Hampshire College, School of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies
