Art, Display, Audience
Research in our department interrogates the many ways in which art is displayed and seeks to understand, and expand, the kinds of publics that engage with it.
At the heart of this work are our collaborations with the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, our department’s home; fourteen museums and galleries that form our network and ejournal Midlands Art Papers; and national and international cultural institutions. Our research uncovers histories of how people and institutions have displayed art to construct or resist political narratives.
We work to understand and shape curatorial and community-led practices in museums, galleries and heritage sites in the present. In the process, we explore how an attention to display raises questions about art’s place in civic and religious life, its dynamic relationship with architecture, and its relationship to cultural narratives of place, from Britain’s regions to continental Europe and across the world. In turn, this research on contexts of display, exhibition histories, curatorial practice and public engagement shapes all our teaching, including on our MA Art History and Curating and our undergraduate module ‘Inside the Gallery: Curating an Exhibition’.