Exhibiting Asian Art: Challenges and Opportunities in the 21st-Century

Exhibiting Asian Art: Challenges and Opportunities in the 21st-Century

Grant:
Instructional Development Fund (IDF)
Academic Year:
2017 - 2018 (June 1, 2017 through May 31, 2018)
Funding Requested:
$500.00
Project Dates:
-
Applicant(s):
nachiket
Overview of the Project:
see attached document
Final Report Fields
Project Objectives:

My Winter 2018 curatorial seminar course engaged a group of bright and self-motivated undergraduate students and graduate students in the ongoing reinstallation of the suite of South Asian Galleries at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). In addition to learning about the long history of exhibiting South Asian art in Detroit in particular, and in Europe and North America at large, my students helped selected artworks that might be displayed in the museum’s galleries, conferred with specialists on their condition, proposed provisional object groupings, gauged public interest in them through focus group testing, and learnt to write interpretive labels.
To enable my students understand critical issues surrounding the caring for and exhibiting South Asian artworks at leading museums in Europe and North America today, I invited Dr. Anna Slaczka, Curator of Asian Art at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam to visit Ann Arbor in March 2018 and speak my class. While the History of Art Department covered most costs associated with her visit, a CRLT grant also played an important role in making this Dr. Slaczka’s visit to Ann Arbor possible. 
 

Project Achievements:

Drawing on her experience and expertise, Dr. Slaczka spoke compelling about a host of issues that museums in Europe and North America with significant displays of South Asian art are today grappling with. These issues include trying to expand the demographic of art museum leaders; learning to listen more carefully to the concerns of diverse stakeholders at the museum and beyond the museum, raising funds in a sustainable manner, struggling to trace ownership history of select objects, especially those that were often forcibly removed from the Indian subcontinent during the British colonial period, trying to learn from and listen to scientific conservators, and finally endeavoring to work within restricted gallery spaces and budgetary constraints of institutions.

Dissemination:
Recognizing its potential and relevance to a wider audience, I opened Dr. Slaczka's talk on the opportunities and challenges of exhibiting Asian art in the twenty-first century to the entire UM History of Art Department. As a result, it was widely advertised and was attended by 40-50 individuals, including many faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Dr. Slaczka’s one-hour long talk was followed by a lively forty-minute question and answer session and thereafter by an extended informal interaction
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