Cover Feature: Making the Museum
As one contributor to this issue’s cover feature, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Johnson puts it, China is currently undergoing a complete “museumification,” with an average of over 100 museums built across the country every year. But as guest editor Nikita Yingqian Cai points out, it remains uncertain whether the speed and scale of this construction might mark a new chapter in the history of global museum development. LEAP December 2012 sets out to identify the problems with the state of the museum in China, and potential solutions to these. Tang Keyang looks at the art museum from the perspectives of urban construction and spatial aesthetics; Biljana Ciric and Jens Hoffman discuss exhibition-making and curatorial practice in the museum; Cai Tao reviews knowledge production in art history by way of the museum; Liu Yingjiu spells out the educational responsibilities of the private art museum; and our editorial team consider artistic inquiries and intervention into the museum, as well as take a survey of Mainland museum collections and public education programming. As a final touch, artist Cao Fei addresses some of these issues and others in her satirical work of short fiction, “Secret Tales from the Museum.”
Other features
The remainder of our middle section is reduced down to several “keywords” meant to offer new perspectives for experiencing and reviewing the work of artists. “Ignorance” and “obstinacy” form the core of Liu Tian‘s abstracted gaze on Geng Jianyi, while Zhang Xiyuan‘s ruminations on Hu Xiaoyuan give much weight to words such as “unimportant” and “neglect.”
Top
All in all, the top of this issue is all over the place: Stephanie Bailey indexes an information-packed appraisal of a newly emergent Düsseldorf; Kate Sutton takes us on a rather olfactive walk-through of Frieze London; artist Yan Xing discloses a few pages of his journal from a recent trip to Kiev; Karen Archey introduces the work of Jana Euler, Simon Denny, Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff, Haroon Mirza, and Claire Fontaine, all based in Europe; and we sit down for a chat with Sylvain Levy about his DSL Collection, which is very real but otherwise very virtual. Elsewhere, we stay put right here in China, with short features on artists Zhou Yilun, Li Songsong, and Song Ta.
Bottom
With the Asian bi- and triennial season at its high, December’s reviews section comes with no less than four four-page reviews: the Taipei Biennial, the Gwangju Biennale, the Guangzhou Triennial, and the Shanghai Biennale. Boris Groys‘s “After History,” Alfons Hug‘s “Place of Residence,” and solo exhibitions from Wang Guangyi, Yung Ho Chang, Hu Yun, Lu Pingyuan, Gao Weigang, Cai Dongdong, Zhan Wang, and Zhang Enli are the remaining subjects of this year’s final round of critique and commentary.
Excerpts from this issue
“Most of the trials confronted by early twentieth-century Chinese art history are related to the phenomenon of cross-contextual exchange: of how to tell the tale of all of those topics—coated as they are in the residual dust of history and enshrouded by political culture—in the language of the art historical profession…”
–Cai Tao (Cover Feature: “The Art Museum: On Knowledge Production in Art History and Institutional Assurance”)
“If theology has become a keyword in the study of Wang’s art, then does that suggest that he has completely lost the ambition to address complex cultural questions?”
–Sun Dongdong (Review: “Wang Guangyi: Thing-In-Itself”)
“For a philosopher, must there be a relationship between his aesthetics—in this case expressed through photography—and his system of thinking?”
–Lu Mingjun (Review: “After History: Alexandre Kojève as a Photographer”)
“Clearly, due to the discrepancy between historical circumstances and the present context, the administrators of Chinese privately run museums lack an appreciation of the importance of education to the art museum concept.”
–Liu Yingjiu (Cover Feature: “The Public Education Responsibilities of Private Art Museums”)
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