Ruins, rhizomes, palimpsests, and traces-mémoires: Guadeloupe’s Mémorial ACTe and the art(s) of representation

This study examines the degree to which the world’s largest slavery memorial and arts center enacts emerging theorizations of postcolonial memory to connect the Caribbean’s colonial history to legacies of human exploitation both transnationally and transtemporally. Situated literally on top of the former Darboussier sugar factory site, the Mémorial ACTe is a lieu de mémoire that invites a palimpsestic approach to its symbolic location, architecture, and museography. Through a consideration of contemporary art, first in the ephemeral occupation by artists of the Darboussier ruins pre-demolition and then in the MACTe’s permanent and temporary exhibitions, we argue that artists are not only uniquely positioned to preserve the memory traces of lesser-known histories, but that their work is particularly adept at articulating interconnections between various moments of racialized violence.

MUSEUM CURATOR BY VOCATION. CANON MIROSŁAW NOWAK PHD (1961–2021): DIRECTOR OF THE WARSAW ARCHDIOCESE MUSEUM

Having fought a long and tough battle against COVID-19, on 11 April 2021, Mirosław Nowak PhD, a theologian, art historian, museum curator, Archdiocese Conservator, and the Director of the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum, passed away. In 1982–1987, Fr. Mirosław studied art history at the History Department of the University of Warsaw, at the same time studying philosophy and theology at the Higher Metropolitan Seminary in Warsaw. Having taken holy orders in 1990, throughout his life he was able to successfully harmonize his ministry with the profession of an art historian. With his research focused on Baroque art, in 2006, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the Chapel of Blessed Ceslaus in the Wrocław church of the Dominicans. Fr. Mirosław Nowak performed many Diocese-wide functions, with 2013 being for him breakthrough: it was then that he became Director of the Warsaw Archdiocese Museum. Under him, the Museum was moved to a new extensive home in the centre of Warsaw’s Old Town; he mounted a permanent exhibition, and created an energetic cultural centre of high impact. At the Museum, he organized lectures, shows, authors’ presentations, concerts, and conferences. Fr. Nowak established contacts with other museums in Poland and abroad; he organized around 40 temporary exhibitions, among which the biggest and most interesting was that dedicated to the Silesian master of the Baroque Michael Willmann, The Warsaw Archdiocese Museum will painfully miss a good human and an excellent director.

Remembering and silencing complexity in post-genocide memorialisation: Cambodia’s Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum

In genocide, complex political actors can take on changing roles of perpetrator, victim or hero at different points in time. In post-genocide societies, political actors seek to shape memory of the violent past to forward their own interests, often undermining this complexity and painting a more black-and-white picture that ties in with Transitional Justice practitioners’ dichotomous assumptions about perpetrators and victims. This article looks at how complexity is remembered and silenced in a post-genocide memorial space that included many complex political actors during its tenure as a security centre: Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia. Here, the audio guide and permanent and temporary exhibitions (as well as changes to these) allow for a co-existence of competing memories, demonising the Khmer Rouge regime for its immense cruelty and simultaneously constructing victimhood for former Khmer Rouge cadres. This could serve as a starting point for discussing complexity, but instead silences in the exhibitions and audio guide create an ambivalence in attributing these roles that masks this complexity.

HOW WERE THE TAPESTRIES IN THE SALA DI SATURNO OF PITTI PALACE ARRANGED? GEOMATICS AND VIRTUAL REALITY FOR ART CURATORS

Three-dimensional acquisition techniques, reality-based modelling and virtual reality are tools used in Digital Humanities prevalently for displaying the results of a study, but they can also suggest new methods of investigation to humanities scholars. In a case study regarding art history, these techniques made it possible to recreate the layout of the Sala di Saturno in Pitti Palace (Florence) in the 17th century, based on information obtained from archive documents on the tapestries designed for that hall and a 3D model expressly elaborated with geomatic techniques. The results were summarised in a video showed in 2019 during the exhibition on tapestries dedicated to Cosimo I de' Medici. A tool was also developed to assist exhibition and museum curators in their work. Through virtual reality, they can design temporary exhibitions or modify the display of the works of art in a museum in a realistic way, using visually and metrically accurate models of the pieces and exhibition rooms.

Cultural and aesthetic functions of Soviet and Russian metro

The article examines the cultural and aesthetic function in the large closed space, namely the metro, where the need for variety, including aesthetic, is most clearly manifested. The metro diversity is a necessary socio-economic function.The metro variety is realized through the use of cultural and aesthetic functions that reflect the history and culture. A dramatic expansion of diversity were first used in the design and construction of the Moscow metro.Such an experience is analyzed using the architecture of the Moscow and Novosibirsk subways. It is shown that the cultural and aesthetic functions remain unchanged despite the change in architectural styles. Over time, the development of such techniques is observed. In addition to the fundamental techniques, which underlie the architectural design of stations, temporary exhibitions appear that reflect the culture and history of the metro and the city. All this contributes to the diversity of the metro environment and maintains the favorable conditions for the society and culture. In particular, the tourist potential and information about the city are being developed. Therefore, the aesthetic diversity can be considered as an important function of the metro.

Loulé Criativo: our creative tourism development story.

The Loulé Criativo project aims to provide a continuous induction of innovation in the products and work processes of professionals; the necessary conditions for research in the arts and crafts and related topics; support for the installation and business of artisans and professionals in the creative sector, adjusted to their needs; and a cultural programme that includes permanent and temporary exhibitions and events related to the theme of creativity, heritage, and arts and crafts. It strives to be closer and closer to its communities, to create business opportunities for local agents, and to offer quality, differentiated, and authentic tourism so that anyone who decides to spend their vacation in Loulé can have an experience of immersion in the local culture.

Design gráfico na exposição Renato Russo: reflexões sobre a comunicação visual | Graphic design at Renato Russo exhibition: reflections regarding visual communication

Renato Manfredini Júnior ou Renato Russo, cantor e compositor, teve uma exposição inteiramente dedicada a sua vida e produção, no ano de 2017, no Museu de Imagem e do Som - MIS, na cidade de São Paulo. A exposição contou com um design de cenografia e expografia desenvolvidos exclusivamente para o evento que somados a um projeto de design gráfico dividiram uma linguagem relacionada ao artista. A partir de textos de Herreman (2004), Screven (1992) e Dean (1996) onde o tema sobre exposições e linguagem gráfica são discutidos pretende-se uma aplicação dos conceitos enquanto confrontados com os itens presentes na exposição e comentados à luz de Lupton e Phillips (2008).*****The achievement of singer and composer Renato Manfredini Júnior, or Renato Russo, was the theme of an exhibition at the Museum of Image and Sound - MIS-SP, in 2017, in the city of São Paulo.The exhibition featured the design of scenography and expography developed exclusively for the event. Both, added to the graphic design project applied to the ambience, share a single stylistic language related to the artist. Thus, the objective of this article is to discuss how graphic creations are inserted in environmental design and their relationship with the exhibition and expography, in view of the scarcity of descriptive material regarding the field of temporary exhibitions. Therefore, contributing to bring information design closer to ephemeral practices, something already adjacent to the museal sector. For this purpose, references developed by authors like Herreman (2015), Screven (1992), Lupton and Phillips (2008) and Dean (1996) are mentioned.

‘The issue of the Mediterranean and the colonies has now moved to the forefront of cultural life’: curating museums and curating the nation in Fascist Italy's colonies

The Fascist model of exhibiting power and placing it in museum settings had its origins in the Liberal exhibitions of the late nineteenth century, and in the first exhibitions devoted to the Risorgimento. However, the regime's museum initiatives were numerous, innovative and varied, and many of them have not yet been adequately investigated; those launched in Italy's colonies, in particular, remain largely unexplored. This article highlights the surprisingly extensive network of museums and temporary exhibitions that Fascism initiated in Italian possessions abroad, involving prominent figures from the regime and contemporary culture, and shows how science, culture and nation-building (in both the colonies and the mother country, and between them) were interwoven in the Fascist museological project for the colonies.

The Ruined Cathedral, Black Arts, and the Grave in Engraving

It was not lost on writers on taste in the nineteenth century that developments in technology that made reproductions ever more ubiquitous, like the related phenomenon of the proliferation of museums and temporary exhibitions, would inevitably affect the relationship of the public to both art and mediation. This chapter traces the dark figures around which Ruskin develops his accounts of the psychological effects of the experience of art objects and reproductions in an era in which abundance and transience were coming to dominate in the experiences of the arts. The chapter culminates with an account of the critic’s attempt to reimagine engraving—the human creative act at the heart of reproduction for much of the century—not as an ongoing manifestation of transience or alienated labor, but as a form of carving designed to register meaning for permanent ends.