ICOM-ICDAD TALKS
Use the F*word!
Transforming Collections with the Strategies of the Guerrilla Girls
Tuesday, May 28, 2024
9:00 am Central European Summer Time (CEST) Online Zoom Meeting (approx. 1 hour program)
Speakers:
Dr. Julia Meer, Curator and Head of the Graphics and Poster Collection at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
Moderators:
Shoshana Resnikoff, Demmer Curator of 20th and 21st Century Design · Milwaukee Art Museum
While the number of special exhibitions on female designers has increased significantly in the past decade, the representation of women in museum collections is still meager. At the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg only 1.5% of 400.000 works in the graphics and poster collection were designed by women. The 2023 exhibition The F*word – Guerrilla Girls and Feminist Graphic Design asked why and presented the museum’s first attempts to change this situation. The lecture will discuss curatorial ideas and institutional challenges, successes as well as failures. One focus will be the design of the exhibition and how it – despite the depressing statistical findings – created an empowering experience. The talk will look at strategies the team explored for expanding the collection such as ‘Open Call for Feminist Zines’ and a ‘Call for Participation’ – which failed miserably. So where do we go from here? Rather than giving answers, the exhibition as well as the lecture offer insights into an ongoing process.
Design Studio FormaFantasma on the Exhibition
Oltre Terra. Why Wool Matters at the National Museum, Oslo
Wednesday, 13 September 2023
(approx. 1 hour Zoom online program) 15:00 Paris (UTC+1)
6:00 Los Angeles, 9:00 New York, 10:00 Brasilia, 13:00 Accra, 14:00 London, 16:00 Cairo, 18:30 New Delhi, 20:00 Jakarta, 21:00 Beijing, 22:00 Tokyo, 23:00 Sydney
SPEAKERS:
Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, Design Studio FormaFantasma
MODERATORS:
Denise Hagströmer, Senior Curator, National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway
Shoshana Resnikoff, Demmer Curator of 20th and 21st Century Design · Milwaukee Art Museum
In the exhibition Oltre Terra. Why Wool Matters, on view at the National Museum, Oslo, 26 May–1 October 2023, the multidisciplinary design studio Formafantasma investigates the history, ecology and global dynamics of the extraction and production of wool. The name of the exhibition stems from the etymology of the word transhumance, formed by the combination of the Latin words trans (across, 'oltre' in Italian) and humus (grounds, 'terra').
The project seeks to avoid the simplistic definition of wool as just a material, and to expand its understanding within a much broader ecology. Wool is the entry point to explore and investigate an intricate realm of interactions and interdependencies within an ecosystem. By looking at the development of wool production, artefacts history and material culture, Oltre Terra aims at unravelling the complexities of the cooperative symbiosis between animals, humans, and the environment.
The scope of the exhibition is to explore this very intimate, yet intricate relationship between humans and animals, in which the boundaries between tamer and domesticated fade. Material culture and biological evolution are too often conceptually separated, which calls for a holistic perspective on the interdependency between production processes and biological evolution.
Join us for an online presentation and discussion of the Oltre Terra project with Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of FormaFantasma, based in Amsterdam.
Read more about the exhibition Oltre Terra. Why Wool Matters.
