Restaging Exhibitions: Reconsidering Art History and Exhibition Making

Restaging Exhibitions: Reconsidering Art History and Exhibition Making is a panel discussion that explores the restaging of exhibitions and the complex mediation between art history and their own materiality.   

Recently there has been a shift in the role that exhibitions play in the reconstructing of art history and the linearity of art. This shift has contested the existing order in terms of the range of elements and material that can become part of a collection and the art-historical canon. With expanded artistic spatial practices, the recognition of a global art history and the rise of curatorial authorship, the act of restaging and re-hanging exhibitions has now developed its own genealogy, becoming an object in itself.

The discussion will take the ICA’s revisiting of the exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity as its starting point in exploring the different methodologies that institutions in Europe have applied when revisiting historical exhibitions. The panel will consider how the restaging and remaking of exhibitions has developed a typology of exhibitions, its legacy altering the way we consider previously unregistered artistic networks, events and artists to reveal a more complicated set of interrelations between exhibition histories and art history.

The invited speakers will consider the implications of restaging exhibitions on artistic practices and museum collections while critically discussing their views on the exhibitions they have recently restaged such as Richard Hamilton at the ICA, earlier this year, Art in Europe after 1968, currently on display at S.M.A.K. Museum, Gent, “Les Immatériaux” for Instance, which was recalled at the Kunstverein Dusseldorf, and Growth and Form (1951) which was reconstructed at the Tate Modern earlier this year.

Chaired by ICA Executive Director Gregor Muir, the panel includes Philippe Van Cauteren, Director of the Museum for Contemporary Art Ghent (S.M.A.K.), Hans-Jürgen Hafner, Director of Kunstverein Düsseldorf and Victoria Walsh, Head of Programme Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art.

This event is curated by ICA Student Forum member Victor Wang