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The principles of packing a case study of two travelling
Includes abstract.|Includes bibliographical references.
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
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Michaelis School of Fine Art
2014
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| _version_ | 1867614116750819328 |
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| access_status_str | Open Access |
| author | Butcher, Clare |
| author2 | Skotnes, Pippa |
| author_browse | Butcher, Clare Skotnes, Pippa |
| author_facet | Skotnes, Pippa Butcher, Clare |
| author_sort | Butcher, Clare |
| collection | Thesis |
| description | Includes abstract.|Includes bibliographical references. |
| format | Thesis |
| id | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/7804 |
| institution | University of Cape Town (South Africa) |
| language | eng |
| last_indexed | 2026-06-10T12:46:56.103Z |
| license_str | Not specified — see source repository |
| provenance_str_mv | Harvested via OAI-PMH from UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publishDateRange | 2014 |
| publishDateSort | 2014 |
| publisher | Michaelis School of Fine Art |
| publisherStr | Michaelis School of Fine Art |
| record_format | dspace |
| source_str | UCTD — University of Cape Town Open Access Repository |
| spelling | oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/7804 The principles of packing a case study of two travelling Butcher, Clare Skotnes, Pippa Hamilton, Carolyn Fine Art Includes abstract.|Includes bibliographical references. The travelling exhibition was formalised in a series of manuals, The Organization of Museums: Practical Advice (Museums and Monuments Series, IX) published by UNESCO as recently as the 1960s. Promoted as a utility for societies seeking to mediate rapid cultural change to one another in the period following the Second World War, my study highlights how certain elements of this display genre could be seen as inherent to all exhibitions: firstly, that carefully selected objects have the power to transport ideological and aesthetic values; secondly, that exhibitions are transient objects, in themselves worthy of study, as constructs of logistical, conceptual, public and political bolts and joints; and thirdly, that exhibition curators often play the role of diplomat – negotiating and mediating meaning across borders of various kinds. Though seemingly an obscure example, the large-scale international exchange of the Exhibition of Contemporary British Paintings and Drawings (1947-8) and the Exhibition of Contemporary South African Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture (1948-9) between the colonial centre and so-called ‘periphery’ of the South African Union, is a complex case study within a certain trajectory of travelling exhibitions. Never dealt with previously, the occurrence of such an exchange is significant not only because of its political context – in an immediate post-war, pre-apartheid moment – but also because many of the curatorial strategies used in the exchange process are heralded in UNESCO’s manual of Travelling Exhibitions (1953). To unpack this British-South African colonial freight could be easily regarded as a ‘merely’ art historical or archival gesture. If however, we understand the archive to be an historically determined framework within which to arrange cultural knowledge (Hamilton 2011), then an archive of travelling exhibitions makes both actual and contingent those cultural arrangements – the transient curatorial ‘principles of packing’ (UNESCO 1963). This project asserts that whether or not an exhibition is designated as such, travelling, as both an approach and the effect of curatorship, becomes the utility for mobilising not only objects but also ideas between contexts as seemingly disparate as those of the 1940s exhibitions or in today’s expansive ‘art worlds’. 2014-09-30T13:42:38Z 2014-09-30T13:42:38Z 2012 Master Thesis Masters MA http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7804 eng application/pdf Michaelis School of Fine Art Faculty of Humanities University of Cape Town |
| spellingShingle | Fine Art Butcher, Clare The principles of packing a case study of two travelling |
| thesis_degree_str | Master's |
| title | The principles of packing a case study of two travelling |
| title_full | The principles of packing a case study of two travelling |
| title_fullStr | The principles of packing a case study of two travelling |
| title_full_unstemmed | The principles of packing a case study of two travelling |
| title_short | The principles of packing a case study of two travelling |
| title_sort | principles of packing a case study of two travelling |
| topic | Fine Art |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7804 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT butcherclare theprinciplesofpackingacasestudyoftwotravelling AT butcherclare principlesofpackingacasestudyoftwotravelling |