Call for papers: Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University

“All museums are sex museums”, alerts Jennifer Tyburczy, in the introduction of her book Sex Museums: The Politics and Performance of Display (2016), suggesting, likely indebted to Michel Foucault, that the museum is a disciplinary institution of sexuality just like the school, the asylum or the prison. Regardless of the typology of its collections, she argues that every museum is a museum of sexuality. Every museum therefore participates in the production of normative discourses on sexuality. This is perhaps even more true when applied to LGBTQ+ sexualities.

Since the starting point in 2021 of the research program “Museum of Modern Art. Section sexualité(s)”, supported by the EUR ArTeC and echoing Marcel Broodthaers’ fictional museum and its mythical “department of eagles”, queerness has been the subject of increased attention in the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou. The exhibition Over the Rainbow (June 28–November 13, 2023, Centre Pompidou, gallery 4, curated by Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov) will be one of the moments dedicated to this ongoing reflection. The ninth edition of Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University will try to address precisely what queerness does to the museum, to the library, to the archives, and the other way round, what happens to it once moving in institutional contexts.

“Cruising” the museum and its primary sources—in the expressiveness of the term, as recalled by Elisabeth Lebovici together with José Esteban Muñoz—thus incites us to drill down the depths of the archive—again, bringing out the force of words and images and exploring in minute detail the strata of accumulated books, journals and overlooked archives. Muñoz’s reading shows us that the retrospective look is after all a gate towards the future. If queerness is still to come, if we are not yet queer because this horizon is always indefinitely deferred, our work on the collections has nonetheless been able to nourish an important acquisition process at the Kandinsky Library, and to bring us closer to it. Constituting a patrimonial collection, these new documents, among many others, raise new questions, and call for research.

Themes and research perspectives
The Summer University will come back at the constitution of artistic and documentary collections on representations of LGBTQ+ sexualities, their appropriation, use and misuse in institutional, activist and community contexts. It will also question the practice of research: how do we work our way through these sources? How do we describe them? What place is given to the living/ oral archive, to different histories, to affectivity and care, to the fictional mode we do history? A particular emphasis will be devoted to printed matter and the diversity of its materiality : militant prints, periodical publications, magazines, ephemera, zines, leaflets and flyers, posters and badges.

Application procedure
The Bibliothèque Kandinsky’s Summer University is aimed at young fellows (PhD candidates, PhDs, PostDocs or equivalent degree and/or experience): historians, art historians, anthropologists, sociologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, curators, librarians, graphic designers, community workers and artists at large.

Application file:
–Written proposal (4,500 characters/700 words) either in English or in French, in PDF format.
–CV which should clearly assess the candidate’s language proficiency. In order to apply is important to have a good command in both English and French.

Candidates are expected to bring along a selection of sources used in their research. The proposal dossier will be sent to: recherche [​at​] centrepompidou.fr by April 30, 2023. The selection committee will retain 25 projects.

A participation of EUR 150 will be required from participants (scholars, professionals affiliated with an institutional/professional/research organization) who will be provided with tuition. The participation will cover transportation on site and institutional entries. Participants affiliated with non-profit organizations/ or associations, will be exempted from participation fees, on the basis of a written proof of their membership.

For any inquiry, please write to: recherche [​at​] centrepompidou.fr, T +33 (0)1 44 78 46 65 or +33 (0)1 44 78 16 66.