Are you interested in the concepts that MOED works with, or do you want to read more about what you’ve seen? In our library section you can find suggestions for further reading. Scroll down to explore texts suggested by our partners.
All the texts presented on this page are easily available online unless stated otherwise. If you do encounter any trouble accessing them, please let us know.
Catalogus ‘What is Left Unseen’
Buikema, Ftouni, Jouwe, Rutten, Vázquez and Wevers. What is Left Unseen. Centraal Museum, Utrecht, 2019.
Download the digital version of the catalogue What is Left Unseen here, which was developed by the MOED team as part of the exhibition ‘MOED: What is Left Unseen’ at Centraal Museum, Utrecht.
Due to Covid-19, most art institutions have had to close their doors or limit their visitation possibilities considerably. Many of these institutions are launching online exhibitions and initiatives to make their collections and visions accessible to the public. Here you will find the initiatives launched by our favorite institutions and by our partners.
BAK Utrecht, basis voor actuele kunst
One of our favorite artistic platforms has decided not to translate their physical work one-on-one unto an online medium to counter potentially excessive display practices. BAK continues their work, however, on their usual online platforms focusing their energies on this crisis’ transformative potential and support for their artistic communities. Part of this effort is accessible via their digital forum Prospections or visit their Covid-19 information page.
Between Art and Quarantine / Tussen Kunst en Quarantaine.
An online challenge that invites art lovers to imitate their favorite art piece from home. For the most recent additions check out @betweenartandquarantine or @tussenkunstenquarantaine on Instagram.
The Museum Arnhem is currently closed but virtually open via their Online Tour. Rather put yourself to work? Try an online Live Sculpting class or join the Online Contest “How is your City Life?”. The winner is included into the collection.
Stay at Home, offer a selection of mini-documentations and audio tours covering the most-talked about exhibitions of the past few years such as Keith Haring’s “Canopy Restoration”. But it does not stop there, Stedelijk offers Live Tours broadcasted on Instagram every Friday at 2 pm CET. Previous tours included Beyond the Image, Base and Nam June Paik; The Future is Now! Although aired live, the tours will also be available on Facebook and YouTube afterwards.
The Van AbbeMuseum is organizing numerous online initiatives to keep art lovers engaged. In their Online collection, Japanese artist On Kawara explores our relationship with time. Their Google Street View, offer a 360 view that enables you to virtually visit the “The Making of Modern Art”& “The Way Beyond Art” exhibitions. Another clever way to easily access multiple art spaces in one is via the SmARTplaces app which offers you seven European museums in your back pocket. Join Flemisch theatre-maker Lucas de Man and let him take you behind the scenes in their Audiotour or watch one of their many Mini Documentaries or listen to their Multi-vocal collection.
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi (Florence, Italy)
In Touch, Building a New Relationship With Our Audience. An online platform taking its cue from Tomás Saraceno’s Aria exhibition to remote-trigger critical reflection.
Reina Sofia Madrid (Madrid, Spain)
This modern contemporary art museum builds its collections based on “multiple forms of relation that question our mental structures and the established hierarchies” (website, np). Although physically closed, the museum offers online content such as podcasts, online exhibitions and live art.
The Goodman Gallery (Johannesburg, Cape Town, London)
The Goodman gallery organizes numerous online exhibitions worth checking out. From all over the world, their exhibitions are now easily accessible online with advanced features to evoke an authentic gallery experience. “A Golden Spike” by Alfredo Jaar, Kapwani Kiwanga, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Tabita Rezaire, and Nolan Oswald Dennis among others is an online exhibition that challenges the idea that nature serves as a mere backdrop to our daily lives. From Johannesburg, the Goodman presents “How to Disappear” by Ja’ Tovia Gary and Kahlil Joseph. A 3D virtual curator-led tour about the pervasive modes and technologies of surveillance employed within contemporary society. From Cape Town , “Over Time” an online solo-exhibition by Carrie Mae Weems explores the systemic structures of the world, actively investigating systems of oppression through power, class, race and gender relations. This exhibition explores how the past and present interact in the making of such realities. Brought to you from London, Goodman offers you “Land of Dreams” by Shirin Neshat. This multi-media online exhibition explores the state of marginal groups such as women and people situated within a diaspora by working through dreams, photography, film and video installations.
The Royal Opera House (London, UK)
Follow the hashtag #OurHouseToYourHouse to stay on top of their latest online steaming services and other announcements.
Farago, Jason. “The merry-go-round stopped. What kind of art will emerge,?” in The New York Times, March 25, 2020.
Michael, Regnier. “Pandemic art, how artists have depicted disease,” in The Art Newspaper, May 2, 2020.
“Nasr, Ramsey: de rol van kunst in Coronatijd,” in Buitenhof, April 19, 2020.
A fragment from an episode by Dutch television show Buitenhof, in which former Poet Laureate, director, actor and novelist Ramsey Nasr discusses the role of art in times of Covid-19 (in Dutch).
The following document offers our selection of staple texts in the field of Gender Studies, either as a result of their innovative research methods, the heavily anticipated and needed inclusion and recognition of its subject matter or because of the wide debates the text initiated due to its provocative statements. List incomplete? Do not hesitate to let us know.
Apesh**t, a music video by Beyoncé & Jay-Z from 2018 that was filmed in the Louvre in which they engage with the European canon housed in the museum.
For an analysis of the video, see “Dancing at the museum; parataxis and the politics of proximity in Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s “APESHIT” in Stedelijk Studies by Liedeke Plate.
Can art amend history?, TED talk from 2017 by artist Titus Kaphar. Kaphar makes paintings and sculptures that wrestle with the struggles of the past while speaking to the diversity and advances of the present. In this talk, Kaphar takes a brush full of white paint to a replica of a 17th-century Frans Hals painting, obscuring parts of the composition and bringing its hidden story into view. There’s a narrative coded in art like this, Kaphar says. What happens when we shift our focus and confront unspoken truths?
One is not enough, a video by the Guerrilla Girls from 2017 in which they argue how the representation of one female artist in exhibitions and museums (in this case the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam) is not enough.
For more information on this, see “The position of women artists in four art disciplines in The Netherlands”. January 2019. A report for Mama Cash by Astrid Kerchman & Pauline Salet.
New to the subject of art, gender and difference? Explore these texts to get you started.
Buikema, Rosemarie L. and Liedeke Plate, red. Handboek genderstudies in de media, kunst en cultuur. Bussum: Coutinho, 2015.
An all-round introduction into the field of Gender Studies. It provides you with varied and up to date insights into Gender Studies as a discipline, within the larger context of Culture Studies in the Netherlands. Both canonical texts and ideas are discussed, such as Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex”, as well as more recent phenomena emerging from digitalisation, globalisation and neoliberalism.
Buikema, Rosemarie L. Revoltes in de cultuurkritiek. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017.
This book investigates the interaction between the arts and political transitions through, among others, feminist and postcolonial theory. The central question is as follows: “what possibilities does the imagination offer, which medium specific means does art harbor to render that, which had previously been invisible, visible and to give shape to that which of yet had remained opaque.
Henning, Michelle, Museums, media and cultural theory, Stuart Allan. Open University Press, 2006.
This work investigates the cultural signification of museums and exhibitions. In doing so, Henning approaches museums from an experiential and performative angle as museums influence our sensual experiences.
Lidchie, Henrietta. “The poetics and the politics of exhibiting other cultures.” In Representation, Stuart Hall, Jessica Evans and Sean Nixon, 120-211. London: Sage, 2013.
This chapter examines how so called “ethnographic objects” acquire their meaning. Central to this exploration is a critical engagement with ethnographic institutes, such as museums, whose representational practices exhibit these objects of so called “other cultures”. In this way, this text critically examines how “the west” represents and classifies non-western cultures.
Leeuwen, Anna van. “Getallen doen ertoe: vrouwen in de kunsten zijn nog steeds in de minderheid,” in De Volkskrant, February 3, 2019.
Newspaper article that denounces the statistical absence of women within numerous artistic domains.
Pontzen, Rutger. “Musea hebben te lang met hun rug naar de wereld gestaan en zijn bezig aan een inhaalrace,” in De Volkskrant, October 24, 2019.
Nduwanje, Olave. “‘Genderdiversiteit is geen westers idee’, zeggen deze kunstenaars” in OneWorld, Januari 22, 2020.
Soon, Simon. “Rethinking curatorial colonialism,” 2016.
A web article by Obieg, an online art and culture magazine that examines contemporary art on a global scale, combining several theoretical approaches with a non-academic critical lens.
Dig Deeper
Buikema, Rosemarie and Maaijke Meijer, ed. Kunsten in beweging, 1900-1980 & 1980-2000 in de reeks Cultuur en migratie in Nederland. Den Haag: SDU Uitgevers, 2003-2004.
This work offers the first two parts of a larger series on “Culture and Migration in the Netherlands”. It emphasizes the multiplicity of Dutch culture and examines how immigration and immigrant art, has influenced Dutch art, ways of living, styles and ways of thinking and how these interactions are reflected in our material, cultural, and social environments. It also maps the varied ways in which immigrant art was received in Dutch culture (in Dutch)
“Curating the end of the world”
An online, multi-media, multi-genre speculative pop-up exhibition featuring Afroflux, Afro_Futures UK, The Afrofuturist Affair and many others looking into the position of Black people across the world in light of global existential threats.
De Groene Amsterdammer. The measurement of presence, June 4, 2019
Mirzoeff, Nicholas, et al., ed. All the monuments must fall: A syllabus. New York City: New York University, 2017.
This online syllabus consists of a collection of texts that relate to Confederate and white-supremacists monuments within the US. This ongoing project was initiated by the anti-fascism protests in Charlottesville Va, in August 2017. This online syllabus wishes to contribute to the ongoing resistance against historical monuments that glorify exclusion and racism.
Stanley, Liz. “Remaking memory: on statues and memorials,” 2020.
This annotated reading list offers material connected with issues of the politics of remembering, memorials, commemoration and statuary located in public space.
Vázquez, Rolando. “From globalizing towards decolonizing: art history and the politics of time – Interview with Rolando Vázquez.” Kunstlicht 29, no. 1. (2018): 98-105.
An interview in which Rolando Vázquez answers questions surrounding de-colonial thought with a focus on the political implications of our modern temporality in which the “contemporary/now” occupies the norm.
Vázquez, Rolando. Vistas of modernity: decolonial aesthesis and the end of the contemporary. Prinsenbeek: Jap Sam Books, 2020.
Cultural and educational institutions are confronted with the responsibility to provide tools and spaces for critical reflection, for engagement, and, more fundamentally, for meeting and recognizing each other in our differences. In this decolonial essay Rolando Vázquez introduces his critique which offers an option for thinking and doing beyond the dominant paradigms.
Vázquez, Rolando and Walter Mignolo. “Decolonial aestheSis: colonial wounds/decolonial healings,” 2013.
An online dossier covering decolonial wounds and healing by two of the most renowned scholars in the field.
Atria, Institute on Gender Equality and Women’s History forms a national knowledge institute that focuses on collecting, managing and sharing the heritage of women. On the basis of research and facts, Atria promotes equal treatment of women and men in all diversity. Atria offers a library and archive and organizes events around these topics. Atria offers a comprehensive collection of texts on Dutch women’s suffrage. Discover below a selection of works in their archive on this subject.
Terra Critica is an international and interdisciplinary research network in the critical humanities. The network is initiated by dr. Birgit Mara Kaiser and dr. Kathrin Thiele in 2012, with a group of core members and a wider circle of participants to the regular meetings. It aims to re-examine critical theory and practice under the conditions of the 21st century, in light of our terran existences that are globally entangled across flows of capital, people, and ideas.
Given the persistent need to decolonize knowledge and institutional practice, as well as the fact that we are living in interdependent ecological and economic systems with growing inequalities, Terra Critica beliefs that critical vocabularies and practices also have to be refined and revised.
Click here to download a pdf. document that contains Terra Critica’s library suggestions, based on four ReadingRoom series held in Utrecht, an initiative they organize in collaboration with Casco Art Institute.
What is the relation between algorithms, hypersea and zombies? They were brought together under the same cover, in the Posthuman Glossary (Bloomsbury, 2018).
The Posthuman Glossary is a multi-layered and diverse collection of both critical and creative terms selected from the contemporary debate surrounding the posthuman turn and jointly edited by prof. dr. Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University and senior advisor to BAK basis voor actuele kunst) and Maria Hlavajova (director of BAK basis voor actuele kunst). Braidotti explains:
“Two main points of our praxis during the production of the book were that it would be a collaboration between artists and academics and that the format would be non-linear, unlike traditional academic edited volumes. In fact, the glossary is not strictly academic, and it deliberately took the risk of falling into what critics dismissively call ‘activist research’. But we both found it important to highlight how much innovative thinking has been done in these hybrid fields. Our focus was on the creativity, energy and inventiveness of on-going developments in the Humanities, which so many people describe—wrongly, as it turns out—as being in a crisis … In some ways the operative model became that of a curatorial practice. While we did exercise quality control—the pieces had to be legible, scientifically accurate and verifiable— they were also allowed to be experimental in both form and content.”
In this interview with Rosi Braidotti, conducted especially for MOED by Lauren Hoogen Stoevenbeld, Braidotti reflects on the editorial and curatorial work she shared with Hlavajova during the editing of this volume. For the MOED library, Braidotti highlights three selected entries from the glossary, which have been made available here: “The Pregnant Posthuman” by Rodante van der Waal, “The (Posthuman Icon) Pill” by Anneke Smelik and Elisa Flore, and “Placenta Politics” by Braidotti herself. Click on the link below to open the interview, in which Braidotti explains why she chose these entries for MOED:
Posthuman Glossary entries: