Exhibition works at creating new histories
A visit to a museum or gallery carries with it some predetermined expectations which impact on what audiences experience. Grappling with how these expectations are formed is at the heart of the fourth installment of the Know the Show lecture series, called 'Objects And Their Worlds', on at the Wits Art Museum.
Stacey Vorster, researcher and lecturer at the Wits History of Art Department and curator of the Lifescapes exhibition at the museum, discussed how to manage expectations. By doing so she encourages us to re-evaluate our initial reading of some of the artworks.
At first glance the exhibition appears to be about notions of objectifying the “object-ness” of an artwork and investigating what constitutes art. Vorster admitted in her talk that the subtitle of the exhibition — ‘‘Six Object Biographies” — had given many visitors cause for pause.
Why use the word “object” rather than “artwork”? For some viewers, the word ‘‘object” could be taken to undervalue the works, but, to others it exposes the snobbery in the visual arts sphere.
Another exhibition, Lifescapes, was born out of a postgraduate course at the Wits School of Arts which was called: “Writing Art’s Histories”. Six students each selected an object from the thousands in the WAM collection. Then each student was tasked with researching and creating biographies of their chosen object.
By contributing to these objects’ life stories a younger generation of art academics was able to engage, interact and re-represent information.
Different questions could be asked than the ones that were asked before, giving each art work an updated relevance, overturning dated rhetoric and creating new histories.
Academics sometimes struggle to construct short essays for wall texts, which often go unread by museum visitors. But here, the Know The Show lecture series seeks to make these wall texts more meaningful.
Attending the lecture series, I found that the connection, interaction and engagement of audiences with art works was heightened, transforming passive observers into active participants. This was evident in the extended Q&A session, which ran over its allotted time. Those present for the lecture weren’t satisfied with merely being spoon-fed the information given to them, they wanted to interpret the works using updated information.
• The last lecture in the series is titled One colour at a time — Contemporary Screenprints, and will introduce an exhibition of the same name which opened at Wits Art Museum on June 27th. It presents works from a major printing studio in Joburg. Leigh Leyde, WAM’s education curator, will be in conversation with Isaac Zavale, Minenkulu Ngoyi and Charles Thabiso Kholobeng, who have links with the Artist Proof Studio. It takes place on Wednesday May 31 at 6pm. Tickets are available at www.webtickets.co.za.
• This article was originally published in The Times.