Photography and the Museum: Processes of and Chances for Institutionalizing the Medium
Friday, December 1 at 9am PST • 12 Noon EST • 5pm BST
Event held via zoom • Registration Link
Long regarded as a “middle-brow” art, at the turn of the twentieth century, photography emerged as a well-established and popular contemporary art medium. The session explores the institutions, processes, and discourses that were instrumental in the institutionalization of photography as an independent contemporary art, and specifically the impact of its belated accommodation in the art museum. Focusing on different case studies from the UK, Greece, and Croatia, this event seeks to shed light on the perplexities behind photography’s institutionalization in these respective countries and the developments that led to the establishment of institutions addressing photography in different ways. It also seeks to reflect on photography’s possible institutional futures.
Bios
Alexandra Moschovi is an academic scholar, art critic, and curator seeking to situate photographic practices within broader art historical, museological, and visual culture debates. With interdisciplinary studies in photography and media and a Ph.D. in art history, Moschovi has published widely on modern/contemporary photography and the interface of photography, digital technologies, the museum, and the archive. She co-authored the volume Greece through Photographs (Melissa Publishing House, 2007/09), co-edited the anthology The Versatile Image: Photography, Digital Technologies and the Internet (Leuven University Press, 2013), and authored the monograph A Gust of Photo-Philia: Photography in the Art Museum (Leuven University Press, 2020). Her curatorial projects include the exhibitions Realities and Plausibilities (Xippas Gallery, Athens, Greece, 2009) and Portrayals of History: Voula Papaioannou-Dimitris Harissiadis 1940-1960, Works from the Benaki Museum Photographic Archives (with M. Skoufias, Thessaloniki Photography Museum, Greece, 2017). Moschovi is a Professor of Photography/Curating at the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries, University of Sunderland, UK.
Sandra Križić Roban holds Ph.D. in art history and is a critic, curator, lecturer, and writer, who focuses on contemporary art, history and theory of photography, post-war architecture, and the politics of public space and cultural memory. She is the principal investigator of the HRZZ project Ekspozicija – Themes and Aspects of Croatian Photography from the 19th Century until Today (2020–2024) and the head of the Office for Photography, a non-profit association dedicated to contemporary photography (Zagreb).
Križić Roban has authored a number of books, scientific articles, and book chapters, published on photography, especially women’s cultural migration and conceptual photography, trauma and alternative ways of memorization, most recently in W.G. Sebald's Artistic Legacies. Memory, Word and Image, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2023. Together with Ana Šverko, she edited the volume Watching, Waiting: The Photographic Representation of Empty Places (Leuven University Press, 2023). Križić Roban is a senior scientific advisor in tenure at the Institute of Art History (Zagreb), Assistant Professor of Culture of Memory at the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb, and Assistant Professor of Photography and Visual Culture at the Philosophical Faculty, Osijek.
Iro Katsaridou is an art historian, director at the MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography since 2021. She has studied art history, and museum studies in Thessaloniki, New York and Paris. Her PhD research (Aristotle University, 2010) treats the institutional discourse on photography in Greece in the period 1970-2000. Iro has worked as a curator for almost two decades, mostly at the Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki, Greece, curating exhibitions on photography and 20th century art, among which German photography during World War II or art and photography during World War I, and co-edited the respective exhibition catalogues. She has taught at several universities in Greece courses on art history and museum studies. She has published in international collective volumes and journals contributions on photography, museums and politics, and she has participated in several international conferences. Together with Eve Kalyva and Pamela Bianchi, she co-edited the volume Museums and Entrepreneuship: Capitilising on Culture that is to appear in late 2023 by Routledge .
Installation view from the "Real and the Record" exhibition,
PhotoBiennale 2021, MOMus-Museum of Photography, Thessaloniki, Greece
2021. ©Antonis Vlachos
This program is generously supported by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation
Photography Network membership is required to attend. To become a member, sign up here: Registration Link for the event on Friday, December 1, 9 AM PST / 12 Noon EST / 5 PM BST.