2021 Annual Symposium

For our fourth annual symposium, Museum 2050 seeks to underscore institutional practices and imaginaries that break out of the paradigms established by museums globally. Such archetypes tend to consolidate a static sense of art history rather than generating new horizons for critically rethinking historical canons and actively participating in the rendering of contemporary art in the present. The conference will explore the complex relationship between art institutions and the formation of art history, and lessons we can take from the past into a new era. We hope that these examples of institution building, historization and persistence from China and around the world can serve as a roadmap for navigating the subjectivity and radicality of contemporary art museums in a changing world that increasingly questions the utility of museums. In line with 2020’s hybrid symposium, all participants presenting from outside of China will be asked to participate virtually while we invite all China-based participants to join us in person.
Program
|| SITE VISIT
Friday, December 10
14:00-17:00 | 798 Studio Visits
17:00-19:00 | Opening Meet & Greet
|| VIRTUAL CONFERENCE
Saturday, December 11
Opening Remarks
Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing Inside Out Art Museum
Leigh Tanner, Museum 2050 Founder
9:00 | The Artists’ Museum by Beatrice Grenier*
9:15 | Heritage’s Digital Futures: Emerging Issues in Cultural Policy and Intellectual Property by Nick Pozek*
9:30 | Reimaging Asian Art Representations in American Art Museums in a Post-pandemic Future by Yi Cao*
9:45 | Women Arts Festival: Feminist Curating in Contemporary China by Jiete Li
Special Introduction
Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing Inside Out Art Museum
10:00 | Keynote Address:The Predisposing MuseumPatrick Flores*, Professor of Art Studies at the Department of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines
10:30-11:30 | Roundtable
Patrick Flores, Nick Pozek,Yi Cao,Jiete Li, moderated by Leigh Tanner
12:30 | Historical Revisions for Continuous Exhibition Promotion – A Study of Four Woodcut Exhibitions in Singapore (1966 – 2016) by Hu Chao
12:45 | Audience and Exhibition: Reform and Practice in Early Soviet Public Museums by Huiyu Cara Zhao
13:00 | Structure and Agency:The Agency of Art Museums in the Early Stage of China’s Institutional Reform by Ma Ji
13:15 | The Ethnographic Turn: The Practice and Theory of Socially Engaged Art by Feng Sha & Cheung Chi-Pui
13:30 | Alternative Writing: Space and Rhetoric in the History of the Exhibition by Pan Jingzhi
13:45-14:45 | Roundtable
Hu Chao, Huiyu Cara Zhao, Ma Ji, Feng Sha & Cheung Chi-Pui, Pan Jingzhi, moderated by Huang Wenlong, Scarly Zhou
Special Introduction
Carol Yinghua Lu, Director of Beijing Inside Out Art Museum
14:45 | Keynote Address: Exhibition, beyond Art History
Wang Huangsheng, Chief Director of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum
15:15 | The Influence and Role of OCAT in the Development of Contemporary Art in China by Guo Qian
15:30 | The Archival Construction of a Museum: Multiple Reverberations of Viewpoints, Narratives and Practices by Pan Yuxi
15:45 | Internet-famous Museum Exhibitions and the Regression of the Function and Initiative of Museums by Iris Li
16:00-17:00 | Roundtable
Guo Qian, Pan Yuxi,Iris Li,Beatrice Grenier, moderated by Ningyi Xi
|| WORKSHOPS
Sunday, December 12
10:00-12:00 | Editing Scenes——A Way of Curating
Speaker: He Xiaote, Director of Exhibition Department, Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum
Moderator: Huang Wenlong, Assistant Curator of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum
13:30-15:30 | New Museology and Contemporary Chinese Art Museums: From the Editorial Work of a Collection of Essays on Art Museum Studies
Speaker:Wang Jing, Executive Editor of Art Museum
Moderator: Scarly Zhou, Curatorial Assistant of Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum
16:00-18:00 | Community Building & Engagement for Art Museums
Speaker: Leigh Tanner, Museum 2050 Founder
| About Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum
Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum is located at the west end of Xishan Cultural Creative Avenue in Haidian District, Beijing. The museum was registered as a privately owned art museum at the Beijing Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau in 2011. With a strong capacity in research and curation, the museum has been carrying out exploration of contemporary art through practice and theory in recent years. In constantly returning to the artistic and intellectual practices in the second half of the 20th century in China, the museum recognizes and articulates the historical process of Chinese contemporary art, as well as uncovers the clues of the ideologies, the rhetoric and logic, and the artistic concepts that still exert influence today, thereby making continuous efforts for the discipline of the history of Chinese contemporary art. The museum focuses on supporting non-commercial art practice and thinking and emphasizes active curatorial experiments. It introduces cutting-edge curatorial ideas and promotes the understanding and development of curatorial work in the field of Chinese contemporary art.