Yesterday PASSIM held a seminar online. PASSIM’s own Isabelle Strömstedt discussed a narrative approach to exhibition analysis that focuses on how documents can be displayed. Isabelle’s dissertation concerns the exhibition “Idé – Patent – Produkt” (Idea – Patent – Product) by the Swedish Patent Office. Annika Öhrner was invited as a guest speaker. Öhrner is Associate Professor in Art History at Södertörn University. She discussed Methods in Exhibition Analysis. Annika opened the seminar with an informative overview of art history and then explored examples of exhibition analysis in recent dissertations.

The seminar was an excellent example of how benefiting interdisciplinary conversations can be. The resonance between the two speakers was crystal clear and I know for a fact that it was greatly inspiring for Isabelle.

PI Eva Hemmungs Wirtén expressed that in less testing times than the current we would have been able to express our gratitude to Annika over a glass of vine or a post seminar dinner. Unfortunately that will have to be rain-checked, but we are grateful.

As Eva concluded in an earlier post here on our blog, the pandemic has meant that we must do things a little bit different if we are to keep momentum throughout these times.

Yesterday’s seminar was an example of at least one upside with online seminars as a handful of scholars joined the seminar from abroad and very much contributed to the discussion after the presentations.

On behalf of the PASSIM team I would like to thank everyone for their participation.

A recording of the seminar will be published on our website shortly:   https://liu.se/en/research/passim

Best,

Mattis Karlsson, PASSIM RA

PASSIM holds seminar on Patents on Display and Methods of Exhibition Analysis, December 1, 2020.

About the Seminar:

In this seminar organized by PASSIM we present a broad introduction to exhibition analysis methods and a focused analysis on patents on display. Speakers are Annika Öhrner, Södertörn University and Isabelle Strömstedt, Linköping University.  Online participation open for everyone and free of charge. You will be able to ask our speakers questions in real-time during the seminar. We encourage you to invite friends or colleagues by sharing this information. The seminar is chaired by PASSIM PI Eva Hemmungs Wirtén. For more information and updates see our twitter @passimproject

Analysis of exhibitions has been present in disciplines of cultural history for some time; however, in recent scholarship, it seems to have gained renewed theoretical interest. While curatorial studies has emerged within the art field and higher art education since the 1990s, the nascent theoretical field of exhibition analysis is dealing with critical approaches to history. In these contexts, the exhibition is sometimes viewed as a media. While focusing on matters of method, the seminar intends to inspire further reflections on the exhibition as historical document and research object.

In Methods in Exhibition Analysis Annika Öhrner presents some theoretical voices in the field before exploring examples of exhibition analysis in recent dissertations in Art History and its neighbouring disciplines. The exhibition – the art exhibition and industrial exhibitions, the World Exhibitions, the more or less “permanent” displays at the national and regional history museum, etcetera – offers a rich and dense research object. Instead, as when working with a singular object or artifact, or with the producer and the audience, the scholar studying the exhibition as a spatial unit is offered a more complex and fruitful research object, allowing viewing history from different points of departure.

In Patents on Display Isabelle Strömstedt introduces her thesis about the exhibition Idé – Patent – Produkt (Idea – Patent – Product) by the Swedish Patent Office. She presents a narrative approach to exhibition analysis with a focus on displayed documents. By looking at the patents displayed in the exhibition, it becomes clear how they extended both the exhibition’s story-time and story-space.

From the exhibition Amerikansk popkonst. 106 former av kärlek och förtvivlan, Moderna Museet, 1964. ©Moderna Museet, ill. from, Art in transfer in the Era of Pop. Curatorial Practicies and Transnational Strategies, Södertörn University, 2017.

Speakers:

Annika Öhrner Associate Professor in Art History and Director of Doctoral Studies in Art History at Södertörn University. Her research is directed towards critical historiography, cultural transfer and museum- and exhibitions studies. She is also an exhibition curator.

Isabelle Strömstedt PhD Candidate at the Department of Culture and Society, Linköping University.  She is currently working on her thesis preliminary titled The Patent Office on Display: Intellectual Property in the Public Eye.

When and where: 

This information as pdf: Patents on Display and Methods of Exhibition Analysis

Zoom link: https://liu-se.zoom.us/j/69009983664

Time: Tuesday, 1 December 2020 13.15-15.00: CET

Welcome!