Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis analyzes the art performance The Modern Procession, organized by the Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Belgium-Mexican artist Francis Alÿs (1959), and performed on June 23,...Show moreThis thesis analyzes the art performance The Modern Procession, organized by the Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with Belgium-Mexican artist Francis Alÿs (1959), and performed on June 23, 2002, in New York City. By using interdisciplinary literary research and comparative media research, this unique performance is first studied from an art performance perspective, with a focus on art performances held on the streets. Secondly the performance is placed in the context of definitions of religious processions, and in the third chapter, the Modern Procession is analyzed from an anthropological and social-geographical standpoint. This thorough analysis does not only reveal the many layers of the Modern Procession, but also what happens when art is taken out of the museum and presented in a new context. By presenting the collection of the MoMA on the streets of New York, the connection between collections and museums is made clear: it is namely art that forms the real heart of a museum, not the building where it is displayed.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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‘The Making of Modern Art’ is a long-term exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven that ostensibly presents the story of modern art. This thesis explores the significances and implications of...Show more‘The Making of Modern Art’ is a long-term exhibition at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven that ostensibly presents the story of modern art. This thesis explores the significances and implications of this: how does presenting modern art history as a story, and specifically one that is ‘made’ in the present tense, challenge dominant forms of history that claim to be singular and objective, and how does an exhibition such as this implicate the art historian whose methodologies of writing and representation similarly tend to obscure their own historical position? ‘The Making of Modern Art’ uses copies of paintings, of exhibition form, and of modes of history-writing. These copies, I suggest, function as translations. By engaging with these copies as translations, I explore how originality, authorship and subject-object relationships might be conceived of differently in contemporaneous art historical practices. The contemporary is a historical position, and contemporaneous artistic practices that address or re-imagine modern art history might, or indeed should, have implications on how we continue to write and reinforce particular forms of history.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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Abstract The German exhibition documenta is inarguably one of the most well-known perennial exhibitions worldwide and takes part every four to five years in Kassel (Germany). The topic discussed in...Show moreAbstract The German exhibition documenta is inarguably one of the most well-known perennial exhibitions worldwide and takes part every four to five years in Kassel (Germany). The topic discussed in this MA thesis, is the 14th edition of documenta and its partial re-location to Athens (Greece) in 2017. This thesis is a critical examination of stereotypical assumptions about Greece’s past that were included in the discourse of the exhibition, and manifested through the public program Exercises of Freedom and the artwork The Parthenon of Books by Marta Minujín. Additionally, these case studies were analyzed based on their common participatory factor using theories of spectatorship by Claire Bishop and Jacques Rancière. This research demonstrates that the documenta14, in the cases of these artworks, conceptualized greek past through the dominant Eurocentric framework.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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The societal role of museums has changed and is still constantly changing, the Museo de América in Madrid, Spain, is no exception. This research aims to capture the evolving role of museums by...Show moreThe societal role of museums has changed and is still constantly changing, the Museo de América in Madrid, Spain, is no exception. This research aims to capture the evolving role of museums by taking on the Museo de América as a case study. The Museo de América was chosen due to the limited international scholarly literature on the relationship museums in Spain, a once powerful and important colonial power, have with contemporary museological discourse. The research question is therefore, to what extent is the Museo de América able to create ‘contact zones’ and capture the changing narrative about indigenous communities in the Americas. This thesis uses Anthony Shelton’s methodology underlying critical museology as a set of tools as well as James Clifford’s concept of ‘museums as contact zones’. This research provides a better understanding of how an ethnographic museum in Spain addresses the colonial and authoritative practices in which museums were built on. The analysis of the Museo shows that some of the Museo’s underlying curatorial practices are consistent with Shelton’s methodological interdictions. However it also identifies a few limitations to the Museo’s capacity to navigate the challenges of bridging historical and cultural gaps across centuries. The most significant being the lack of an indigenous voice regarding the conquest itself. By including indigenous voices and presenting them as active participants, museums can play a critical role in providing visitors with the tools to better understand the evolution of modern society’s values.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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In the last three decades, the world has changed tremendously because of the internet and new digital technologies. This change has affected the way how cultural institutions are working internally...Show moreIn the last three decades, the world has changed tremendously because of the internet and new digital technologies. This change has affected the way how cultural institutions are working internally and also the external interaction with the public. Starting from the 1990s onwards, digital exhibitions have evolved. Digital textile and dress exhibitions are not restricted by time or place and grant broad public access to the collection of institutions. With the case study of the Textile Research Centre (TRC), this thesis shows the benefits and limitations of digital textile and dress exhibitions for opening up access to heritage collections and analyzes its prejudices and barriers. The research is carried out through a literature review, an extensive critical visual analysis and a digital lace exhibition that has been conducted in the frame of this work. The analyzation shows that virtual exhibitions are more accessible when providing a user-friendly layout, quality images of the objects, and the quality of information.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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Rotterdam was een bloeiende koopvaardijstad in de zeventiende eeuw. Hoewel weinig bekend, was er een aanzienlijke groep kunstenaars actief. Aan de hand van kunstwerken die het dagelijks leven in de...Show moreRotterdam was een bloeiende koopvaardijstad in de zeventiende eeuw. Hoewel weinig bekend, was er een aanzienlijke groep kunstenaars actief. Aan de hand van kunstwerken die het dagelijks leven in de stad, in de kerk en op dan wel aan het water verbeelden, is een beeld geconstrueerd van een welvarende koopvaardijstad. Met behulp van teksten is nagegaan in hoeverre deze afbeeldingen een realistische impressie zijn. Onder het corpus is een schilderij aangetroffen waarop naakten te zien zijn die een bad nemen, terwijl een passagiersboot hen passeert.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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In the age of the Anthropocene, we are faced with unprecedented challenges; we have realized we are exploiting the Earth’s resources, society is becoming more complex, and urbanization is...Show moreIn the age of the Anthropocene, we are faced with unprecedented challenges; we have realized we are exploiting the Earth’s resources, society is becoming more complex, and urbanization is increasing at a rate never before witnessed. Understanding these challenges is loaded with uncertainty, both in defining the problems and how humanity should respond. One response is that of urban sustainability. Primarily addressed from the perspective of urban planning, urban sustainability focuses on infrastructural and technological solutions. This thesis posits that questions of sustainability in cities however cannot be disconnected from the cultural dimension. Using a comparative case study of two festivals – Burning Man and DGTL Amsterdam – the relationship between humans and their surroundings is explored. The analysis of the festivals focuses on the manifestation of ‘sustainability’ as a set of values through the artworks presented on the festival terrain and the framing of the festival experience. Political ecology theories are used as tools to explore the relationship between humans and their environment. Urban experimentation acts as a theoretical lens to understand the festival as a ‘microcosm’, a breeding ground for creativity and culture, and likening it to the city. The thesis presents a reading of urban festivals that outlines how culture can be introduced to urban sustainability research in response to questions to test political ecology in practice. In doing so, the thesis brings together the once disparate categories of human and nature.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis examines what insights the photography series Blue Sky Days (2012-) by Tomas Van Houtryve provides into concepts as vision, subjectivity and representation, which means that the series...Show moreThis thesis examines what insights the photography series Blue Sky Days (2012-) by Tomas Van Houtryve provides into concepts as vision, subjectivity and representation, which means that the series functions as a case study, a common thread. The drone as imaging technology challenges the traditional relation between image and vision. The remarkable visuality of the series, the vertical perspective, distorts our sense of spatial and temporal orientation. It differs from the visuality that long dominated our vision, the paradigm of the linear perspective. I argue that drone vision is a collaborative vision by a human-drone assemblage that should be understood as an embodied vision. Blue Sky Days problematizes the effect of the vertical perspective and the necropolitical logic to which it invites. In contemporary warfare, the digital drone image is no longer treated as a passive representation, but as an active entity, being part of a process. Blue Sky Days as a series of static photographic images emphasizes ambiguity and undecidibility, which contrasts the visuality of certainty employed by synthetic vision systems. Van Houtryve uses a strategy of anthropomorphism, a strategy that raises awareness for the fact that agency is distributed by human and nonhuman forces. His series humanizes the other, encourages empathy for the people living under the drone, which contrast the current of anthropophobia in synthetic imagery. In the last chapter, I discuss the series in relation to the debates around representation that troubled documentary photography, war photojournalism and art. Now hypermediacy and immediacy seem both a strategy by the military to create a civic weaponized eye, Van Houtryve’s drone photography is an interesting alternative gesture by emphasizing the process of remediation.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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In the sixteenth century, Rome embarked its most sumptuous epoch, and with it, hosted splendid building projects initiated by the church and the papal court, which ranged from sacred spaces to...Show moreIn the sixteenth century, Rome embarked its most sumptuous epoch, and with it, hosted splendid building projects initiated by the church and the papal court, which ranged from sacred spaces to profane architecture. Display of property and wealth became the crucial factor for success among the curial members, who advertised their rank and prestige through such display. However, the papal court and its extensive exploitation of imperial Rome, its achievements and its foundation for the glory of Renaissance Rome and the Catholic Church soon encountered disapproval. The removal from the modest life of Christ and his Apostles but also from spiritual concerns, the increasing paganism and the profligacy, all became major threats for the Roman Curia by the beginning of the sixteenth century. Criticism came from various sides. Humanists turned against the common practices of the church. Protestant reformers raised their voices, but judgement also came from within the own ranks, the Catholic clerics. The critics attacked not only the church’s religious and spiritual programme, but, by that, its secular conduct and its outward. The papal court and its worldliness, grandeur and excessive expenditures were only some of the indicators that triggered criticism and prompted a re-assessment of the role of the pope and his court by the sixteenth century. However, the clergy’s commissions were flourishing, serving not only to embellish the cityscape of Rome and its surroundings, but enhancing the cardinals’ social status. It is striking that at around 1550–1570 (the peak of reformatory criticism) it appears that the most sumptuous and monumental properties of such kinds belonged to the clergy. And that to such an extent that not even the aristocratic Roman families had the means to compete with the high level of expenditure and patronage of cardinals from papal and noble families. It thus remains thus crucial to explore how the Catholic Church and thus the clergy justified wealth, excessive expenditure—for both ecclesiastical and secular purposes—especially by the eve of Reformation and how those (apparent) discrepancies between lush lifestyles and ecclesiastical renovation were perceived among the curia or how they were broadcasted and towards a larger audience.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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The purpose of this thesis is to examine the image of Western art in Taiwan with a focus on the Chimei Museum (*1990). Motivated by the recent trend for acquiring and displaying Western works of...Show moreThe purpose of this thesis is to examine the image of Western art in Taiwan with a focus on the Chimei Museum (*1990). Motivated by the recent trend for acquiring and displaying Western works of art in East Asia, I concentrate on the Taiwanese response in an attempt to bridge academic gaps in interpreting how East Asia reacts to Western culture. On the one hand, Taiwanese art collecting and exhibiting has definitely mirrored the cultural environment in East Asia as it was one of the earliest international art markets in post-war East Asia (*1945). On the other hand, having been colonized by the Japanese who introduced their westernization strategies (1895-1945) and then with a fresh injection of Chinese culture as the seat of the Republic of China (*1945, post-war period), the Taiwanese public’s impression of Western art provides a copybook example of how the Western aesthetics were constructed under Japanese, Chinese and local Taiwanese rules. The Chimei Museum is an exemplification of the introduction of Western art in modern Taiwan. As a private museum, the educational background of its founder, Xu Wen Long (許文龍, *1928), who was brought up under Japanese rule, marks the initial point of entry of Western aesthetics into the colonized society. During her directorship of the Chimei Museum in the late 1990s, Xu’s successor, Kuo Ling Ling (郭玲玲, *1956), has shown a new attitude toward appreciating Western art in post-war Taiwan. Taking the perspectives of collecting and museum culture as the starting point, my analysis of the Chimei Museum hopes to provide a pioneering discussion about the general Taiwanese reception of Western art.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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A study to the relation between the reputation of William of Orange and portrait prints for 1584-1702. I researched the changes in the reputation of the prince in this period, the different ways he...Show moreA study to the relation between the reputation of William of Orange and portrait prints for 1584-1702. I researched the changes in the reputation of the prince in this period, the different ways he was depicted in portraits and the iconography and texts on the cartouches of the portrait prints.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis analyzes the rhetoric of the Van Gogh Museum and exposes its communicative strategies holistically. An extensive and multi-faceted analysis on the persuasive character of the Rietveld...Show moreThis thesis analyzes the rhetoric of the Van Gogh Museum and exposes its communicative strategies holistically. An extensive and multi-faceted analysis on the persuasive character of the Rietveld building, the Kurokawa wing, and modern media shows that the communicative strength of the Van Gogh Museum is situated in its awareness of different audiences, their varying needs, and plural museum experiences. In a museum landscape where collection-oriented purposes are increasingly shared with public-oriented functions, the only way through which the museum is able to exert and preserve its expertise is by catering to its audiences. Revealing the rhetorical strategies behind the VGM’s communication results in an awareness that the postmodern museum is capable of transforming its commercial activities into valuable dialogues, in which the visitor is treated as an equal, active, and indispensable participant. Commercial museological practices do not threaten the educative value of the museum but carry the potential to actively encourage inclusivity and accessibility. The VGM emits this message in all of its inherently communicative elements.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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The Jarves Collection, the first collection of early Italian art in the United States, was created by James Jackson Jarves (1818-1888) in Florence in the 1850s, and brought to the USA in 1860...Show moreThe Jarves Collection, the first collection of early Italian art in the United States, was created by James Jackson Jarves (1818-1888) in Florence in the 1850s, and brought to the USA in 1860 hoping to create a “Free Gallery of Art.” Jarves presents medieval and Renaissance Florence as a democratic and religious model for the United States to emulate. The collection thus performed an educational function, literally carrying civilization – in the form of early Italian paintings – to the United States. Considering Jarves’s role within the history of American collecting and reception of Italian art, publications have focused on placing Jarves within the American history of collecting, while giving little thought to underlying structures in Jarves’s motivations and actions in assembling and promoting his collection. As Jarves presents history as a didactic and emancipatory model for the United States, this thesis asks what his stake was in presenting early Italian art as the model of civilization. Limited to the period from the early 1850s, when Jarves starts collecting, until 1871, when the collection was sold to Yale University, this thesis focuses on Jarves’s motivations, placed within contemporary trends. It is split into three parts: the first looks at the underlying structures that influenced the make-up of the collection; the second looks at Jarves's ideas as expressed through his writings, and at their connection to his collection. The final part looks at the Jarves's main aim for his collection: the creation of a national gallery of art for the education of the American public.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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In this thesis I aim to get a grip on ‘how’ a narrative is being told to a beholder of a Renaissance painting. I describe the condition in which a painting presents a story to a beholder. The...Show moreIn this thesis I aim to get a grip on ‘how’ a narrative is being told to a beholder of a Renaissance painting. I describe the condition in which a painting presents a story to a beholder. The condition is the representation of pictorial space. The representation of pictorial space has been characterized as naturalistic. Renaissance naturalism has to be interpreted through a theological lens, which helps us to understand the rhetoric behind Renaissance naturalism. A theological framework can explain the evaluation of the perceptions of natural sense experience and explains the function of composition, that is, to transform the beholder’s consciousness into a religious consciousness. Specific rules of composition contribute to ‘how’ a narrative is being told to a beholder of Renaissance art. By inquiring these rules we get a better understanding of how the Renaissance artist represents space; how the Renaissance beholder relates to the depiction of space; and how the modern viewer relates differently to the Renaissance painting.Show less
Research master thesis | Arts and Culture (research) (MA)
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This thesis focused on several female collectors in the seventeenth century in the Low Countries and what their influence has been on for example the science of botany, garden design, and...Show moreThis thesis focused on several female collectors in the seventeenth century in the Low Countries and what their influence has been on for example the science of botany, garden design, and entomology. The main figures that are discussed are Maria Sybilla Merian, Magdalena Poulle, and Agnes Block.Show less
