When Media Becomes Form: Declining conventions of materiality, space, and audience in the popular music museum

When Media Becomes Form investigates the arresting experiment of the popular music museum project as it has evolved over the last twenty years. It argues that despite the need for adjustment, popular music is not essentially incompatible with the museum but, in fact, provides a compelling example of how the contemporary museum is animated, and sometimes bested, by the demands of today’s pluralistic and media-rich society. The thesis is based on three central case studies—the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Cleveland), the Experience Music Project (Seattle) and the British Music Experience (London)—and the research draws upon a series of in-depth interviews with curators, directors of education and media specialists, as well as archival research, site visits and exhibition critiques. It examines the collections, exhibitions, and audience relations of the purpose-built popular music museum and analyses how it declines certain conventions of materiality, space, and audience in order to align its provision with its subject. In terms of collections, it shows how the popular music museum, by finding value in mass produced objects, engages the social imaginary of a culture informed by celebrity and participation. In terms of exhibitions, it reveals how, by allowing a sense of co-ownership of the cultural narrative, the popular music museum produces an authentic ‘congregant space’. And, finally, in terms of visitation, it argues that the popular music museum, having recognized expertise within its audience and accepted that it cannot contain the visitor’s relationship to its subject within the space of the museum, embraces a notion of the extended visit that allows its audience to engage the museum from within the everyday

Paulette Phillips : The Secret Life of Criminals : Clues and Curiosities

Catalogue to accompany Phillips' exhibitions at the Cambridge and Oakville Galleries. Adams' interpretation of the artist's video/film installations draws attention to historical events that inspired the staged scenarios. Themes such as crime, disaster and self-abuse are addressed. Hatt's essay focuses on how Phillips disrupts traditional narrative structures, and how the physicality of her installations engage the viewer. Issues of violence, masochism and tragedy are also discussed. Brief biographical notes on authors. 10 bibl. ref

Promise : A Collection of Performance-Based Video and Film Dedicated to Different States of Becoming

As Logue notes, this exhibition looks at how various women artists use performance-based video and film to examine the physicality and fantasy of identity in a personal context. Logue’s text combines biography, descriptions of the works in the show and her responses to them. Adams underscores the concept of mimicry in her reading of the works. A short statement or text by most of the artists is included. Biographical notes

Public

Ten authors contribute essays investigating the prominence of the visual in the "search for a sense of the ethical," addressing topics such as iconoclasm and the efficacy of images, transsexual identity, tattoos and the gendered figure, Holocaust representation and the simulation of history, AIDS activism, and dance music culture. Contains artist's projects by Jones and Tisdale. 266 bibl. ref

Public

Ten authors contribute essays investigating the prominence of the visual in the "search for a sense of the ethical," addressing topics such as iconoclasm and the efficacy of images, transsexual identity, tattoos and the gendered figure, Holocaust representation and the simulation of history, AIDS activism, and dance music culture. Contains artist's projects by Jones and Tisdale. 266 bibl. ref