Maura Reilly

A manifesto for museological change that examines the outcome when acquisitions policies, permanent collections and exhibitions become increasingly important battlegrounds for social justice. Museums are facing a reckoning. Thrust to the forefront of difficult conversations around toxic philanthropy, increased corporatization, decolonization, repatriation and legacies of theft and looting, many of our cultural institutions are undergoing a period of radical transformation, seemingly redefining their very function and mission to address new public concerns. But who owns the past? How bloody is too bloody? And whose museum is this, truly? Museums and Social Justice addresses these questions and more, shedding light on pressing issues such as why an oil giant attempted to sponsor an arctic exhibition at the British Museum; why Berlin’s Humbolt Forum is exhibiting British-looted objects from Benin; and why the Baltimore Museum of Art has made a public commitment to acquire more works by women artists. Using such events as case studies, Dr. Maura Reilly engages with pioneering arguments in and around matters of diversity, access to heritage, decolonization, patrimony and racial equality, and outlines specific action plans to confront these challenges, avoid reputational controversy and maintain confidence in our public institutions.

Only 16% of the most recent Venice Biennale artists were female. A mere 14% of MoMA’s 2016 display is by non-white artists. Only one third of artists represented by US galleries are female, but over two-thirds of the enrolment in art and art-history programmes is young women… The fight for gender and race equality in the art world is far from over. Indeed, the more closely one examines the numbers, the more glaring it becomes that white, Euro-American, heterosexual, privileged and, above all, male artists continue to dominate the art world. Arranged in thematic sections focusing on feminism, race and sexuality, this book examines and illustrates pioneering examples of exhibitions that have broken down boundaries and demonstrated that new approaches are possible, from Nochlin’s ‘Women Artists’ at the LACMA in the mid-1970s to Martin’s ‘Carambolages’ in 2016 at the Grand Palais in Paris. By exposing both the disparities and inclusive solutions, the author addresses the urgent need in the contemporary art world for curatorial strategies that provide alternatives to exclusionary models of collecting and display. In so doing, she provides an invaluable source of information for current thinkers and, in a world dominated by visual culture, a vital source of inspiration for today’s ever-expanding new generation of curators.

Richard Bell has established a significant reputation as a political commentator and 'enfant terrible' in Indigenous art over the past two decades. This stunningly illustrated catalogue features more than 26 colour plates of his provocative and often humorous works. With their bold use of images and text, they force viewers to face the troubling issue of racism in Australia. Bell's inspiration is complex and multi-layered. He is an avid appropriator, borrowing from other artists, periods and cultures, including Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, Jackson Pollock, and Aboriginal painter Emily Kam Kngwarreye, among others. He works across a wide range of media, including painting, performance, and video, producing powerful messages that confront and unsettle: about Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians' relationship to each other, about their country's history and about art itself. Accompanies the first travelling exhibition dedicated to Richard Bell's work in the United States. Organized by the American Federation of Arts, it opens at the Tufts University Art Gallery, Medford, Massachusetts in September 2011