"The freedom is being able to produce whatever you like."

"I remember when I was a student I was invited to participate in an exhibition which was about ‘Black art’. I sent my pictures in and they sent them back because they weren’t ‘Black enough’. They were interiors, because at that time that’s what I did – made pictures of interiors and still lifes. I was confused. I think, because of having grown up outside the metropolis, I wasn’t aware that my work needed to look or be a certain way. For me, it was really interesting because by building those walls around what you should and shouldn’t be, you’re doing exactly what people have decided you should be. The freedom is being able to produce whatever you like."

Joy Gregory

photograph by Joy Gregory from her series "Autoportraits" via

The intention of decolonising museums is not ...

 ... "to erase history, or the history of the object, but to work collaboratively with communities to develop multiple perspectives to support a better understanding and deeper meaning. Decolonising the collection will mean that we have more information about objects, not less. We will be able to present a more balanced, authentic and decolonised account of history."
Comms team response to blog comment, 2022

photograph by Inge Morath (Museum Hamburger Bahnhof, Saachi Collection Show, Berlin, 1998) via

Arts Events Increase Understandings of Older Adults But Not Comfort With Ageing. An Abstract.

Objective: To explore the impact of an innovative intergenerational art event showcasing retirement village life on attendees' understandings of older adults and ageing. 

Methods: A survey of 93 art event attendees was conducted immediately after 16 sessions of the event (78% response rate). Respondents reported on their event experience and its impact on their understandings of older adults and attitudes towards ageing. Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) used to test for differences between age groups (18-34, 35-64 and 65+ years). 

Results: Over 90% of attendees reported the art event helped them develop an understanding of the lives of older people, with the greatest impact on young and middle-aged adults. The majority of young and middle-aged adults, however, expressed concern about their own ageing. 

Conclusion: Results suggest that intergenerational art events have the potential to increase understandings of older adults and their lives, but this may not translate into personalised comfort with ageing. (Cook, Vreugdenhil & Macnish, 2018)

- - - - - - - - - -

- Cook, P. S., Vreugdenhil, A. & Macnish, B. (2018). Confronting ageism: The potential of intergenerational contemporary art events to increase understanding of older adults and ageing. Australasian Journal on Ageing, link

- photograph by Steven Edson (1975) via

Tony Heaton on the Work of Disabled Artists

Tony, your practice is widely established and your work is recognised internationally. However, the work by disabled artists is too often restricted to the community they represent and struggle to reach the mainstream art debate. Do you agree with this thought? If so, what are in your opinion the reasons of this phenomenon?

Well, perhaps the question is, why does the so-called ‘mainstream’ marginalise disabled artists and actually disabled people generally? Should we be forced to knock on those closed doors or should the ‘mainstream’ be opening up and looking beyond their elitist and frankly conservative narrow view of what is art and who makes it, and extending their intellect to engage with disabled artists and disability arts. If they did they would find some amazing work. Ultimately it's about power and rank, disabled people are marginalised and oppressed through poverty, lack of access to goods and services, limited access to transport and the built infrastructure and prejudice. The ‘mainstream’ were not interested in showing or collecting the work of disabled artists, this is the main reason that I initiated NDACA (National Disability Arts Collection and Archive), because if we as disabled people don't make it happen for ourselves then it won’t. NDACA will help to show and promote that history, a history that would have otherwise been lost because that work is not in ‘mainstream’ collections. The mainstream are also reluctant to help us into positions of power and rank, there are very few disabled people promoted onto decision-making boards or in arts institutions, this needs to change, but those with power are always reluctant to change, just as there is institutionalised racism there is an inherent ableism throughout society.

Tony Heaton

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

photograph of Tony Heaton in front of the sculpture of a map of Great Britain made of wheelchair parts of one single NHS wheelchair (Great Britain form a Wheelchair, 1994), photo by Hilary Porter via

Maria Bartuszová, Sculptures, and Blind Children

Maria Bartuszová (1936-1996), born in then Czechoslovakia, was a sculptor with only few opportunities to exhibit during her lifetime but nevertheless developing her own practice in "relative seclusion" and leaving a legacy of around 500 sculptures.

"In 1976 and 1983, together with Gabriel Kladek, Maria Bartuszová organized workshops for blind and visually impaired children. Sculptures that were created allowed the blind to become familiar with the meaning of various forms and textures, sense the tensions between geometric and organic forms, recognize the emotional substance of these artefacts and develop their imagination. This sort of violation of selflessness of art, “different” use and the emphasis on the haptic characteristics of sculpture is an expression of Maria Bartuszová’s immensely avant-garde approach to her artistic tasks." (via)

- - - - - - -

photograph via

"Our cultural memory follows us everywhere." Jean-Michel Basquiat

"I'm an artist who has been influenced by this New York environment. But I have a cultural memory. I don't need to look for it, it exists. It's over there in Africa. That doesn't mean that I have to live there. Our cultural memory follows us everyhwere, wherever you are."
Jean-Michel Basquiat

"I don't know if my being Black has anything to do with my success. I don't think I should be compared to Black artists but with all artists."
Jean-Michel Basquiat

- - - - - - - - -
photograph (by Andy Warhol) via

"I am not a black artist." Jean-Michel Basquiat

"I am not a black artist, I am an artist."

Jean-Michel Basquiat 

"The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them."

Jean-Michel Basquiat

It was lonely, he was lonely, the only black man in the room, his prodigy status like that of a toy. “They’re just racist, most of those people,” he’s quoted as saying in Dieter Buchhart’s Now’s the Time (Prestel). “So they have this image of me: wild man running – you know, wild monkey man, whatever the fuck they think.” (literally via The Guardian)

- - - - - 

photographs via and via

Quoting Steve McQueen

“What I do as an artist is, I think, to do with my own life experience. I came of age in a school which was a microcosm of the world around me. One day, you’re together as a group, the next, you are split up by people who think certain people are better than you. It was kind of interesting to observe that.”

Was there a stigma attached to that separation? 

“Oh for f*cking sure. And it was informed by class and race and privilege. Absolutely. No ifs or buts or maybe about it.”

Steve McQueen

As a working-class boy growing up in 1980s suburbia, "there were no examples of artists who were like me. When did you ever see a black man doing what I wanted to do?" (Steve McQueen/The Guardian)

- - - - - - - -
photograph via

"Please don't create another old person." Yoko Ono's Open Letter

At my age I should be in a certain way. Please don’t stop me being the way I am. I don’t want to be old and sick like many others of my age. Please don’t create another old person. 

So even when I am rocking on the stage, they are totally hard on me. They demand the musical standard of a classic musician and attack me for the rhythm or some notes which are not precisely in tune. I am not concerned with what my voice is doing. If I was, what you experience would not be. My voice will be dead, once I am concerned about it, in the way you are asking me to. Go to a classical concert, if you want to hear a “trained” voice. What I escaped from when I was very, very young. I created my own niche. If I tried to present you classic music it won’t be what I created. You don’t get that way, with Iggy for instance, a grand rocker, who is creating his own brand of Rock, just as I am.  

Let me be free. Let me be me! Don’t make me old, with your thinking and words about how I should be. You don’t have to come to my shows. I am giving tremendous energy with my voice, because that is me. Get my energy or shut up. 

A critic of my show I did on my 80th birthday. You wanted me to be coming in at the same time on the top of the bars with the tracks. Well, I like to syncopate my voice to come in before or after the music notes, not right on top of the tracks, you see. That’s done in classical music, also. Remember? Yes. I don’t mind using what I learnt from classical music. 

Just let me be free, so music will come out as my voice in the way it wants. Otherwise, it will not be beautiful. My music is unworldlily beautiful. It is a mixture of all the generations I went through on this planet: when I was born seeing the world with wonderment, when I was a wise infant, full of original ideas with not too much intimidation yet, when I was a energetic and rebellious teenager, when i was a sexy twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies and now. Plus all the folk music of the world, the Voice of people, never intimidated – and plus some music coming from another planet or planets! I respect that, cherish it, and am always thankful of note by note that comes in me and out of me. 

Another criticism: That my short pants in my video BAD DANCER was very short. Was that bad? You are not criticizing other dancers whose pants are worn short. Do you have a separate standard for a person of my age even in the way our outfits are cut? 

I am afraid of just one thing. That those ageism criticism will finally influence me, I would succumb to it and get old. So I am covering my ears not to listen to you guys! Because dancing in the middle of an ageism society is a lonely trip. Don’t stone me! Let me be! Love me plenty for what I am!

Yoko Ono Lennon, 18th of February 2015

- - - - - - -
photograph (AP/Allen Tannenbaum) via

Define Gender: Unboxing

“Gender isn't as black and white as I grew up believing. While some people are fluid and others decisive in their identification, both are of equal value. The social labels of the male and the female feel irrelevant and restrictive today. I wanted to express this through dance ...

... because, energetically, it can call upon the masculine and feminine but also exist outside those stereotypes. With the box structure of the set—and the dancer's liberation from it—I wanted to show that we do not have to exist within the binary limitations society inflicts on us. This film presents a space where gender can be more fluid than fixed definitions allow.”
Kate Cox

image via

Saul Steinberg. A Genius Facing Antisemitism.

Romania is an anti-Semitic country, as Saul finds out when he moves to the capital with his family. His scholastic career in the Liceu Matei Basarab in Bucharest would be made difficult by this climate. After enrolling in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, in 1933 he decides to study architecture but is not admitted: there is a limit to the number of Jewish students. Years later he would write: "My childhood, my adoslescence in Romania were a bit like being a Negro in the State of Mississippi" (Reflections and shadows, 2001). (literally from the exhibition at the Triennale Milano currently showing Saul Steinberg's works)

Saul Steinberg was born on 15th June 1914 in Ramnicu Sarat, a small town north of Bucharest, in Romania. His parents, Moritz Steinberg and Rosa Iacobson, belonged to the Jewish middle class. In 1915 the family moved to Bucharest and Moritz set up a bookbinding shop and then began to produce decorative boxes. Some of the family had already emigrated to America in the late nineteenth century. In 1925, Saul enrolled in the Liceu Matei Basarab and three years later graduated to its upper school. Having gained his diploma in 1932, he enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the University of Bucharest. He received good grades but the university's anti-Semitic atmosphere kept him from regularly attending courses. (text from exhibition, Triennale Milano)

In 1933, he applied for admission to the Faculty of Architecture but was denied entrance because a quota system limited the number of Jewish students who could be accepted. Instead, he went to Milan and enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture of the Regio Politecnico, arriving in the city in November. (...) But in 1938 the Fascist regime promulgated racial laws and Steinberg risked expulsion from Italy. He was able, however, to complete his studies in 1940, but his efforts to leave Italy for the US failed. After various ups and downs, including being arrested and confined in an internment camp, he managed to leave for Santo Domingo, where he spent a year waiting for a US visa. He finally arrived in New Yorsk in July 1942. (...) (text from exhibition, Triennale Milano)

- - - - - - - - -

photographs via and via

The Art World. Sharing the Same Prejudices We Face in the Real World.

"When one thinks of the art world, one thinks of a place of openness and tolerance -- yet that is hardly the case. The ‘art world’ shares the same prejudice we face in the real world. That said, the illusion of togetherness that has been constructed around the art world makes said reality even more toxic. Forms of sexism, racism, and ageism dominate art culture just under the surface -- which dictates our collective knowledge of art history. This is a topic that few gallery owners want to discuss -- because it is a topic that, more often than not, reveals a world of bigotry and unnecessary challenges placed before artists." Brian Sherwin



photograph of Silvana Mangano by Eve Arnold (1956) via

How a Museum Can Make a Difference to the Debate of Migration

"It can make a difference because you can take the conversation about migration away from the heat of political debate and the media, where arguments tend to be framed in extreme terms and become polarized, and there is sometimes a dearth of real information. If you can take this conversation into a calmer cultural space - and the cultural world is where people are accustomed to test what they think about things - then that is a benefit. I think that people go to see films, read books or visit museums in order to see the world through other people's eyes. This automatically makes you question your own attitudes, and your relationships with other people.



I think that the medium of culture is often where we process our emotional responses. People sometimes have feelings about migration that are complicated or internally inconsistent; it is the topic that is on everybody' lips nowadays - indeed it has been for decades, but the focus is particularly intense right now. If we can help take these conversations into a well-informed cultural space then I think that we can make a real contribution to a calmer, more reasoned public conversation about migration."
Sophie Henderson

- - - - - -
- Henderson, S. (2017). Migration Museum Project. In Acesso Cultural (ed.) The Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees: The Role of Cultral Organisations.
- photograph via

David Fleming and the Perfect Museum

"In terms of museums as part of the overall cultural life of a society, we can be a platform to enable people to be visible, not hidden, we can encourage empathy, respect and understanding, we can be a positive platform, we can be a supporter, campaigner and active participant/collaborator. Museums are places that can enable many voices to be heard. All of this work comes down to the teams working within museums being aligned with the framework of a strong mission and linked policies. Being active about inclusion means being outward facing, aware of societal and global inequalities and their causes, and seeing contemporary life and the future as being influenced by the past. Being active about inclusion is a mind-set and means working hard to include."



"Museums working with an inclusion mind-set will think about the broader context of any subject or theme they deal with. They will need to take a fresh look at the past, working with people whose histories have often been excluded from the main narrative, looking at uncomfortable (or controversial or contradicted) subjects in an honest and open way. But working with culturally diverse people/communities, migration and refugees is not always about a museum being a campaigning organisation and a platform for debate; it can also be about being a ‘safe’ place."
David Fleming (Director of National Museums Liverpool, 2001-2018)

- - - - - - - - -
- Fleming, D. (2017) Thinking strategically about inclusion in museums. In M., Vlacou (coord.) The Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees. The Role of Cultural Orgnisations (50-57). Acesso Cultura
- photograph via

Queering the Collections

During Euro Pride 2016, the movement "Queering the Collection" worked together with Dutch museums voicing concerns that museums would be too heteronormative - hence underrepresenting queer people and reestablishing binary ideas about gender. Generally speaking, museums are not places that provide truthful, objective information about history, culture, and other aspects of society, although one might think so. Different strategies were used, each having a different but positive effect: highlighting the sexual orientation of artists, setting up a queer exhibition that offers new stories to visitors, using a queer prospective as interpretative tool, i.e., switching the perspective (Barendregt, n.d.)



- Barendregt, L. (n.d.). Queering the Museum. How do queering strategies in museums change the representation of queer people? Thesis: Utrecht University.
- photograph by Richard Kalvar via

The Age-Friendly Standards Self-Assessment Checklist for Museums

Museum Development North West has developed a checklist for museums to help assess and monitor their progress against age-friendly standards. The main aspects are: building relationships, considering programming, providing appropriate facilities, communicating appropriately, and providing a warm welcome.



excerpts:

building relationships:
- Facilitate relationships between the different generations the organisation interacts with
- Aim to foster relationships with older people not only as audiences, but as volunteers, ambassadors, trustees and active participants in the organisation
- Acknowledge that older people are not a homogenous or distinct visitor segment but a diverse group with a wide range of abilities, tastes etc. The organisation will respond in ways that are appropriate to individual needs, informed by individuals themselves
- Be open and willing to learn from older people and solicit their views, either formally, or informally
- Encourage relationships with other places and services older people may use (e.g. health and care facilities, housing providers, adult learning centres, libraries, clubs and societies and community centres)   
- Consider working in partnership with other age-friendly cultural organisations and venues in the local area to help inform older people about the whole cultural offer that is available to them

consider programming:
- Encourage artistic work that has the ability to inspire, articulate & celebrate life in older age  
- Avoid making assumptions about taste and recognise that with any large and diverse group comes diverse interests. Ensure that the views of older people are represented on any consultation panels or questionnaires 
- Aim for intergenerational provision to be integrated into the whole programme and sustained beyond specific participation or engagement initiatives 
- Think about collaboration, co-production and work that is not only for older people, but with and by older people- as programmers, facilitators and artists 
- Consider timings and times of day in programming- including matinees and daytime activities. Build in extra time for getting settled, intervals and comfort breaks. Also factor-in local public transport provision and be aware that where it is unavailable at certain times (particularly at night), this may present a significant barrier, as well as potential hidden costs

::: Checklist: LINK

- - - - -
photograph by Burt Glinn (Museum of Modern Art, 1964) via

When Art Theft Becomes Artwork

"I decided to steal the painting." In 1976, German performance artist Ulay (1943-2020) stole Spitzweg's painting "The Poor Poet" - which also happened to be Hitler's favourite one and an icon of the Third Reich - from Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie, ran with his hands and feet through the snow and drove "with the museum guards at his heels" to the district of Kreuzberg at the time known for its large percentage of immigrant workers mainly coming from Turkey and rather a ghetto. Before entering an impoverished Turkish family's home, he called the police, then hung up the painting in their living room.

Here, Ulay ran through the snow with the painting under his arm, to a Turkish family, who had agreed to let him shoot a documentary film in their home—however unaware that it involved a stolen painting. Before entering the family’s home, the artist called the police from a phone booth and asked for the director of the museum to pick up the painting. He then hung up the painting in the home of the family “for the reason to bring this whole issue of Turkish discriminated foreign workers into the discussion. To bring into discussion the institute’s marginalization of art. To bring a discussion about the correspondence between art institutes from the academy to museums to whatever. (via)

This demonstrative act, which lasted around thirty hours, expressed the artist’s personal conflict with his German origins and, at the same time, raised awareness about the discrimination of foreign workers as well as the marginalization of art in post-war Germany because – as Ulay stated years later – “everyone should have art in their homes”. (via)

::: Watch: How I Stole a Painting

- - - - - - - -
photograph via

The C*nt Cheerleaders

"Students in the early feminist programs, such as the Cal-Art Feminist Art Program, were taught to say the word cunt until it lost its derogatory nature and female sexuality was revalued, and yet just a few years ago, at the "F-Word" symposium, an event organized to honor their legacy, its organizers were so tentative that they were unable to even spell out the word that defined the movement. (...) At the very end of the symposium, Faith Wilding got up and did the Fresno "cunt cheer". Give me a C... The audience's embarrassment, discomfort, but perhaps also awe could scarcely have been more palpable if she had peed on the floor!"
Schor (2009)



"To contemporary readers the use of the crude slang term cunt will generally be understood in a derogatory way, but this is not necessarily how Rowbotham understood it at the time. Like the reclamation of the negative term queer in the gay and lesbian community and the sitll controversial use of the term nigger by blacks, there was a (now decisively failed) feminist effort made to reclaim the word cunt in positive terms. A great U.S. example of this would be the "cunt cheerleaders," students from Judy Chicago and Miriam Shapiro's Feminist Art Program at Cal Arts, who would turn out at the local airport in cheerleading costumes that spelled out the word cunt to greet feminists visiting the program."
Wilson (2015)



- Schor, M. (2009). A Decade of Negative Thinking. Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life. Durham & London. Duke University Press.
- Wilson, S. (2015). Art Labor, Sex Politics. Feminist Effects in 1970s British Art and Performance   Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
- photographs via and via and via

Dutch Masters Revisited

Museums in the Netherlands have started ditching historical terms and adding portraits of black people to what was formerly "a sea of all white and mostly male faces" in order to "promote inclusion and social equity". Amsterdam Museum will no longer use the term "Dutch Golden Age" (via) to describe the Dutch Republic, a world power in the 17th century with a prosperous economy, and "a flourishing of art, culture and intellectual thought", a term that also "losses over the ugly realities of Dutch ascendancy" such as the involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade - about 600.000 enslaved Africans were traded by the Dutch (via).



“The Western Golden Age occupies an important place in Western historiography that is strongly linked to national pride, but positive associations with the term such as prosperity, peace, opulence, and innocence do not cover the charge of historical reality in this period. The term ignores the many negative sides of the 17th century such as poverty, war, forced labor, and human trafficking.”
Tom van der Molen

"We will continue to work with people in the city to uncover underexposed stories and perspectives of our shared history.”
Daniel Boffey

“We believe that the Golden Age is, in a way, the story of the winners, and it hides the colonial past of the country. It hides slavery, but also it covers up poverty more generally. Not everyone participated in the Golden Age, not at all.”
Margriet Schavemaker

“If you want to protect an open and democratic system, it will mean that you have to promote greater inclusion of what you understand as ‘Dutch,’” and that means telling new stories, and coming up with new terminologies. There is an implicit hierarchy built into many of the Dutch cultural institutions, and that has to be made explicit.”
Karwan Fatah-Black

“If you talk about the Golden Age, people think they know what that story is about. What we forget to tell is that it was only about 1 percent of society. People in Holland were stricken by poverty, there were internal wars going on, and on top of that there was slavery as well. The people in the Netherlands today are not just descendants of that 1 percent; they’re descendants of the 99 percent as well.”
Jörgen Tjon A. Fong

- - - - - - -
photograph by Sandra Lousada (Rothko exhibition, 1961) via

"The art world is simply not the liberal, progressive bastion that it imagines itself to be."

According to a study that looked at 26 art museums and institution in the US and an analysis of the global art market ranging from 2008 to 2018, only 2% of global art auction is spent on work by women. In addition, five artists make up 40.7% of these 2%, with Yayoi Kusama accounting for 25%. 11% of the art acquisitions for permanent collections were by women, i.e., 29.247 of 260.470 acquisitions.(via).



"The art world is simply not the liberal, progressive bastion that it imagines itself to be."
Helen Molesworth

- - - - - - - - -
photograph (Picasso exhibition, Tate Gallery, 1960) via