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museums, poetics and affect

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Feminist Review

Abstract

This paper reflects on affect and emotion as they relate to poetics—her/histories—in twenty-first century museums. Using specific examples, it considers the ways in which collections of material culture hold diverse meanings and how ideas are communicated to audiences over time and space but might also be challenged through imaginative activity. Key objects, exhibitions and activities discussed highlight masculinities at work in museums and include the temporary art installations by Yinka Shonibare and Fred Wilson in the Victoria and Albert Museum's (V&A) Norfolk House Music Room in 2007; the portrait in oils of the Jamaican scholar Francis Williams, painted by an anonymous artist around 1745; and a contemporary oral commentary by Benjamin Zephaniah in the V&A British Galleries, which are considered through a feminist lens of poetics.

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Notes

  1. The capital B for Black people throughout this paper denotes a political allegiance, standing against the historical devaluation of their knowledge and experience (Golding, 2009).

  2. Holden, J. and McCarthy, H. (2007) ‘Women at the top’, http://www.culturalleadership.org.uk/uploads/tx_rtgfiles/Women_at_the_Top_Provocation_Piece.pdf, last accessed August 1, 2012.

  3. O’Neill, M. (2004) ‘Enlightenment museums: universal or merely global?’, http://www.elginism.com/20071012/826/, last accessed June 17, 2009.

  4. Shonibare is interested in the complex biography of ‘typical’ African batik cloth (produced in the UK and exported across Africa, using Dutch printing techniques taken from the colonised Indonesians).

  5. Wilson's work here recognises that the audience is not hit by a magic bullet of curatorial intent, but rather that there are diverse readings of objects, emotionally complex mixtures of felt heritage and perceptions of self and others.

  6. Wilson, F. (2007) ‘Uncomfortable truths’, http://www.vam.ac.uk/ uncomfortable‐truths, lasts accessed April 7, 2009.

  7. Lidchi, H. (2008) ‘Symposium: “The Tropen Museum for a change!”’, video, http://www.tropenmuseum.nl/-/MUS/25655/Tropenmuseum/About-Tropenmuseum/Organization-and-staff/Symposium-The-Tropenmuseum-for-a-change!, last accessed December 20, 2012.

  8. Samuel further contends that if literature were integrated into the study of history, children might be provided with a wider set of ‘benchmarks’ by which to act as critical citizens (1994:15).

  9. Sandahl, J. (2002) ‘Fluid boundaries and false dichotomies—scholarship, partnership and representation in museums?’, http://www.intercom.museum/conferences/2002/sandahl.html, last accessed December 20, 2012.

  10. ibid.

  11. Flynn, P. (2007) ‘Kylie, Gilbert and George: an exhibition of pop ephemera is inclusive in a way that high art can only hope to be’ The Guardian, 21 April, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/apr/21/comment.comment1, last accessed December 20, 2012.

  12. Council of Europe (2008) White paper on intercultural dialogue: “Living Together as Equals in Dignity”, Strasbourg, June 2008, 20, 30, http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/intercultural/Source/White%20Paper_final_revised_EN.pdf, last accessed May 30, 2009.

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  1. Viv Golding
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Golding, V. museums, poetics and affect. Fem Rev 104, 80–99 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.2013.2

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