Art Museums in a Global Age

• Credit value: 30 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Dr Sarah Thomas
• Assessment: a 5000-word essay (100%)
  

In this module we offer a critical analysis of the ways in which art museums continue to negotiate their relationship with globalisation. We ask:

• What might be some of the consequences of globalisation for both art and its institutions?
• Can art history ever be global, and if so, how?
• What might a 'world art' look like and who would be its gatekeepers?

In the last few years major exhibitions have focused on a wide range of subjects, including global pop art, art from the Black Atlantic, Latin American Post-minimalism and Moscow Conceptualism. In this module we will consider the future of art's institutions, traditions, objects, and canons in a global world.

Indicative syllabus

• An introduction to globalisation and its impact on public art museums
• Art and mobility: a globalist history of art
• Challenging the canon: the expansion of collecting policies in Western art museums to embrace the arts of Africa, Oceania, South America and Asia
• Tate and internationalism: class visit to Tate Modern
• Art v. ethnography: challenging the 'West and the rest' model
• A museum 'of the world, for the world': class visit to the British Museum
• Branding: the 'McGuggenheim' phenomenon
• The artist's voice: contemporary art and globalisation
• The global art market
• World's Art Fairs: the rise and rise of the Biennale
• 'World Art' and the future of art history

By the end of this module, you will:

• understand the impact of economic globalisation on international art museums
• understand and be able to critically evaluate some of the moral and intellectual challenges associated with such major international shifts
• have acquired a broad awareness of key contemporary debates in the international art museum world
• have developed appropriate historical and theoretical frameworks and approaches for study
• be able to analyse a text, summarise its arguments, evaluate it critically and apply it in the development of an argument
• have presented a cogent critical argument in a verbal and written form, showing knowledge of the relevant literature
• be able to access and understand museum policies
• be able to write an essay on a related topic at MA level, demonstrating an awareness of the main issues and debates in the field
• have discussed critically texts, exhibition techniques, institutional practices and ideas, in a seminar context.