Wednesday 16 May 2012, 6.30 – 8.30 p.m.
The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

The Smithsonian-Westminster Colloquium invites you to a discussion forum with Dr Peter Jakab, Associate Director, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC

Other contributors include: Andrew Nahum, Senior Curator in Aviation, Science Museum, London; David Hendy, Professor of Media History, University of Westminster.

Peter Jakab is Associate Director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs and curator of World War I Aviation at the National Air and Space Museum.  His publications include Visions of a Flying Machine: The Wright Brothers and the Process of Invention (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990); The Published Writings of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000; co-edited with Rick Young); and The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age (National Geographic Society, 2003; co-authored with Tom Crouch). At NASM he has curated numerous exhibitions, including The Wright Brothers and the Invention of the Aerial Age, which opened in 2003.

Open and free. No booking required, but RSVP appreciated.
Further information and RSVP: Helena Scott, email H.Scott@westminster.ac.uk

Sir George Cayley (1773-1857), the Father of Flight

Friday 27^th April, 1.00-.200 pm
The Royal Society, Carlton House Terrace, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5AG

This Royal Society lecture discusses Cayley’s pioneering aviation work, and his roles as an inventor and as founder of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street. Cayley’s work will be related to the scientific and intellectual milieu of the day, and to debates regarding the public engagement with science and technology. The lecture will be delivered by Alan Morrison, who is an Honorary Fellow in the IMCC at the University of Westminster, as well as a Lemelson Center Research Associate at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. He curated the exhibition ‘Sir George Cayley: the Father of Flight’ shown at the RAF Museum Hendon.

The lecture is open and free to the public – there is no need to book, and seats are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Sports and the City
April 24-25 2012
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent St, London W1B

Organised by our friends in the Department of Social and Historical Studies at Westminster, the University is staging a two-day conference on sport and the city. The conference will also include a reception to launch Mark Clapson’s book An Education in Sport: Competition, Communities and Identities at the University of Westminster Since 1864, which constitutes the second part of the University’s ‘History Project’.

The conference costs £60 for both days, including lunch and drinks reception. A student rate of £30 is also available.

To register please contact Anna McNally at archive@westminster.ac.uk and details will be given for credit card payment.

The IMCC-affiliated MA in Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture at Westminster, in association with The Johns Hopkins Masters Program in Museum Studies, presents:

Teaching with Collections: A Discussion Forum
Tuesday 20 March 2012, 6.30 – 8.30
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Keynote Speaker: Henry Kim, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Henry Kim is the Director of the University Engagement Programme, a three-year project sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, aimed at expanding the use of the museum’s collections in teaching across the University, as well as a specialist on archaic and classical Greek coins and European medals.  He has been a curator at the Ashmolean Museum and university lecturer in Greek numismatics at the University of Oxford since 1994, and was the Project Director for the Ashmolean Redevelopment Project, completed in November 2009 and the redevelopment of the Egypt Galleries, completed in November 2011.

Open and free to all. No booking required, but RSVP appreciated. Further information and RSVP: Helena Scott, scotth@westminster.ac.uk

Thursday 16 February 2012, 7pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1
Price: £7.00 / £5.00 concessions (includes free glass of wine).

This season’s Whitechapel Salon organised by the IMCC in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery is on ‘Cultures of Capitalism’. Our fourth discussion focuses on future of education under contemporary capitalism, with guest participants Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism, Andrew McGettigan, author of the arts and humanities blog Critical Education, and Andrea Phillips, Reader in Fine Art Practice and Director of Research Studies, Goldsmiths. Chaired by Marquard Smith.

Book your ticket at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/22/product_id/1120?session_id=1325609439457568b84811bd9f97bb2cb619476b46

UPDATE: Unfortunately Mark Fisher is unable to participate on this occasion because of illness. Hopefully we’ll be able to get him down again for a future event in the Salon series.

Wednesday 1 February 2012, 6 pm – 8 pm,
Room 152, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

True Lies of War
Group for War and Culture Studies Seminar

Hongping Annie Nie, University of Oxford
“China’s War with Japan (1937-1945): A Study of Chinese History Textbooks”

Dr. Hongping Annie Nie (MA in Education, Calvin College, USA; Ph. D. in Cross-cultural Education, Biola University, USA) is currently Faculty Tutor of Chinese Politics at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is also a core member of the Leverhulme funded China’s War with Japan Project, History Faculty, University of Oxford. Her research interests include moral/ideological education, mass communication, patriotism, and national memory. Among her publications are The Dilemma of Moral Education Curriculum in a Chinese Secondary School (University Press of America, 2007) and “On-line Gaming, Ideological Work, and Nationalism in China” (Journal of Contemporary China, forthcoming).

Celine Righi, London School of Economics
“Memory in post-Civil War Lebanon under artistic scrutiny: a space for individual and social autonomy in the public debate?”

Celine Righi completed a Master in Political Sciences at Science Po Lyon in 2000 and a Master in Social Psychology at Paris IX Dauphine University in 2001. After working for a think tank in Paris and Lyon in the field of social and economic development, Celine embarked in her PhD in 2008 at the Institute of Social Psychology at London School of Economics.

Entrance free. To reserve a place, please R.S.V.P. Dr Caroline Perret: C.Perret@westminster.ac.uk

Thursday 16 February 2012, 7pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1
Price: £7.00 / £5.00 concessions (includes free glass of wine).

This season’s Whitechapel Salon organised by the IMCC in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery is on ‘Cultures of Capitalism’. Our fourth discussion focuses on future of education under contemporary capitalism, with guest participants Mark Fisher, author of Capitalist Realism, Andrew McGettigan, author of the arts and humanities blog Critical Education, and Andrea Phillips, Reader in Fine Art Practice and Director of Research Studies, Goldsmiths. Chaired by Marquard Smith.

Book your ticket at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/22/product_id/1120?session_id=1325609439457568b84811bd9f97bb2cb619476b46

At the Workface: A Talk by Fred Lonidier
Tuesday 13 December 2011, 3.30-5.30pm
Fifth Floor, 32-38 Wells Street, University of Westminster, London W1T

Seminar: new arts and trade unions partnerships
Proposals for a national documentation project and AHRC research network focused on promoting new creative synergies and campaign strategies connecting the unions, social networking groups, NGOs, and arts sectors.

Fred Lonidier is one of the leading pioneers from the late 1960s onwards, of the arts and trade union movement in the USA. He studied at Yuba College and San Francisco State (graduate work in sociology and photography), and later joined the University of California at San Diego Faculty in 1972.  His work continues to deal with the possibilities of photography applied to trade union campaigns for social justice, labor history, and social change. He has also been the guiding energy behind the pioneer US Trade Union sponsored Labor Link TV which cablecasts on three channels in San Diego County. His work has recently focused on workers rights and cross-border labor struggles and solidarity between U.S. and Mexican workers.

Admission is free, but please book a place in advance from Dr Stefan Szczelkun: szczels@wmin.ac.uk

Coordinated by Littoral Arts Trust in association with Critical Network, Strategies for Free Education, and the IMCC, University of Westminster.

Wednesday 10th October 2011, 1.15-2.30pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW

Helen Glew (History, University of Westminster)
“Women at the Regent Street Polytechnic, 1882 – 1945”

Further details on the English Literature and Culture research seminar series here.

Thursday 15 September 2011, 7pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1
Price: £7.00 / £5.00 concessions (includes free glass of wine).

This season’s Whitechapel Salon organised by the IMCC in collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery is on ‘Cultures of Capitalism’. In the second of four events interrogating contemporary economies of art and culture, Julie Lomax, Head of Visual Arts, Arts Council England, London, Niru Ratnam, Director of Aicon Gallery, and Victoria Walsh, Research, Tate Britain, discuss The Future of Museums and Galleries: Culture, Education, and Policy. Chaired by Marquard Smith.

Book your ticket at: http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/shop/product/category_id/22/product_id/962?session_id=13148072992e2fd7d4c36c363f076298461909906a

The University of Westminster’s Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, in association with the Masters Program in Museum Studies, Johns Hopkins University, invite you to:

‘ONLINE’: What can Museums and Galleries learn from online education in Universities, and vice versa?
A Round Table discussion with keynote speaker Phyllis Hecht (Johns Hopkins University)
Wednesday 20 July 2011, 6.30-8 p.m.
The Board Room, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Entrance free. RSVP Sharon Sinclair, email sinclas@westminster.ac.uk

Phyllis Hecht is Director of the Master of Arts in Museum Studies program at Johns Hopkins University, USA. She is the Chair of the Committee on Museum Professional Training (COMPT) of the American Association of Museums (AAM). Most recently she co-edited and contributed to The Digital Museum: A Think Guide (2007), an anthology on museums and technology. Phyllis will discuss how the MA program at JHU is using social networking, including incorporating Facebook and Twitter into its learning strategy.

This event is part of the JHU Museum Studies London Onsite Summer Seminar held at the University of Westminster. The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture launches its new MA programme in Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture in September 2011.

Heather Ewing (The Smithsonian), ‘The Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge’
Smithsonian-Westminster Colloquium
Wednesday 23 February 2011, 6.30–8.00 pm
The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

Heather Ewing is a graduate of Yale University and the Courtauld Institute of Art. An architectural historian, she is a research associate at the Smithsonian Archives and has worked for the Ringling Museum of Art. She is the author of The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution and the Birth of the Smithsonian (Bloomsbury 2007); and co-author with Amy Ballard of Smithsonian Architecture (Random House 2009). She organised a successful campaign for the placing of a blue plaque at 9 Bentinck St, London W1, the address at which James Smithson wrote his famous will bequeathing his fortune to the United States to found in Washington ‘an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men’. Join Heather for a discussion on the historical and contemporary role of museums, galleries and universities.

The Smithsonian-Westminster colloquium is a scholarly collaboration examining issues of educational, social and cultural policy and practice, and includes, in association with Johns Hopkins University, a major research project on environmental sustainability.

Entrance is free but is by invitation. If you would like to attend please email the coordinator of the Smithsonian-Westminster colloquium, Alan Morrison: morrisa1@westminster.ac.uk

BACA (Brixton Artists Collective Archives group) and 198 Contemporary Art and Learning inform us of the launch of their project Brixton Calling!, funded by Arts Council England and Heritage Lottery Funding. and organised in partnership with Lambeth Archives, Tate Archive, Women’s Art Library, and the IMCC at Westminster.

Brixton Calling! is a collaborative and participatory project as well as an exhibition that connects contemporary Brixton to its past. The intergenerational project will bring together Brixton artists and communities to explore some of the Gallery’s collaborative and artistic approaches to social/political issues and create new artworks that are relevant to Brixton today.

The first stage of the BACA Project will be: 50 Reasons to Celebrate, Brixton Art Gallery – 1983-86, Archiving Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective. The project’s main activity is a series of Community Archiving and Engagement projects that will be developed in Brixton between January and September 2011. The outcomes will form, alongside BACA archives, an exhibition that will be held October-December 2011 at 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning. The second stage will be a 2012-201 archiving and research project: BAG Archiving. At the end of the project, archives collected and produced during both stages will be transferred to Tate Archive, Women’s Art Library (Goldsmiths), Lambeth Archives and Carpenter Hall Archive (LSE).

Brixton Calling! Launch Party is scheduled for February 2011. Watch this space!

Theatre for a Young Audience in the UK

Karian Schuitema, a PhD student at Westminster, has organised a one-day conference to be held at the University on Friday 16th July. 

Keynote Speakers:
Wolfgang Schneider (University of Hildesheim, Germany. ASSITEJ President)
Matthew Reason (York St John University)
Jeanne Pigeon and Roger Deldime (Université Libre De Bruxelles. Founder of Centre de sociologie du théâtre and founders of Théâtre La Montagne Magique)

 Further details, including full programme on Karian’s website here.

Just gone out on the e-flux mailing list, so we thought we might as well post it here also (read on after the break):

Announcing ambitious MA courses and PhD programme in the Arts, Humanities, and Cultural Institutions at the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture (IMCC), School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages, University of Westminster, London.

Continue reading e-flux announcement

Activating Brixton Art Gallery, 1983-86: Archives and Memories
Saturday 5^th June 2010, 11am-4pm
Westminster Forum, University of Westminster, 32 Wells street, London W1T 3UW

A collaboration between BACA (Brixton Artists Collective Archives) group, and the 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning, the project 50 Reasons to Celebrate, Brixton Art Gallery – 1983-86, Archiving Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective (2010-2012) will be officially launched in Autumn 2010.  BACA consists of five individual and original members of the Brixton Artists Collective: Teri Bullen, Guy Burch, Françoise Dupré, Rita Keegan, and the IMCC’s Stefan Szczelkun.  They were part of a significant group of artists, the Brixton Artists Collective, and were instrumental in the foundation, development and running of the Brixton Art Gallery.

The ‘Activating Brixton Art Gallery, 1983-86: Archives and Memories’ symposium at Westminster is the first of two university-based symposia that will contribute to the Project’s research and development in relation to content, context, process and dissemination.  An invited group will discuss the Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective’s socio-political and artistic concerns and contemporary relevance.

Speakers include: Paul Dash, Department of Educational Studies, Goldsmiths; Adrian Glew, Tate Archive; Althea Greenan, curator Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths; Ajamu, artist; Sally Mould, Brixton Art Gallery exhibiting artist and Copyart.

The 50 Reasons to Celebrate, Brixton Art Gallery – 1983-86 project promotes and celebrates the achievement and legacy of the Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective and provides contexts and opportunities for the re-opening of existing archives and for future archiving of the Gallery and its Collective. The project incorporates public events and participation including a postcard project, an oral history project, a community archiving project, community-based workshops, gallery talks, symposia, a publication and a major archiving exhibition at the 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning (winter 2011). At the end of the Project, Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective’s old and new archives will be transferred and donated to Tate Archive for safekeeping and for broader public access (Spring 2012). Lambeth Archives, Tate Archive, Young People’s Programmes, Tate Britain and the Women’s Art Library, Goldsmiths, University of London have confirmed their support.  Artist Studio Company, Autograph ABP, Birmingham City University, London School of Economics, Hall Carpenter Archive and the University of Westminster are also confirmed partners.  

For further details about the syposium, please contact Stefan Szczelkun at: S.Szczelkun@westminster.ac.uk

For more information about the Brixton Art Gallery and its Collective and first 50 exhibitions please visit the website set up and developed by Brixton Art Gallery & Artists Collective co-founder Andrew Hurman: http://brixton50.co.uk

Visual Culture Studies in Europe

Friday’s international conference entitled ‘Visual Culture Studies in Europe’, hosted by the Institute, was a huge success. A stella cast of leading academics, curators, and editors from Austria, Spain, Croatia, Norway, Belarus, Italy, England, and France including Iain Chambers, Oliver Grau, and Adrian Rifkin came together to discuss the study of visual culture within the context of European universities, art colleagues, and cultural institutions. The audience, a talkative mix of staff and students from Westminster as well as welcome guests from elsewhere in London, Brighton, and as far away as Lithuania, had a day to remember. The conference speakers, members of the Visual Culture Studies in Europe Network, plan to meet again next year, this time in Barca!

Wednesday January 13th 2010, 5.00pm
Cayley Room (room 152), University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street

Professor Toby Miller (University of California, Riverside)
“Cultural Policy Redux”

Toby Miller is editor of the journal Television & New Media, and author of many books including Spyscreen (Oxford University Press), Television (Routledge), Television Studies (BFI), Popular Culture and Everyday Life (Sage), Technologies of Truth (University of Minnesota Press), The Avengers (BFI), and The Well Tempered Citizen (The Johns Hopkins University Press).

For our Dutch friends: Director of the IMCC, Marq Smith, is contributing to Epistemic Encounters, on the future of the Graduate Art School, at MaHKU (The Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design) this Friday 11 December, as part of an ongoing research project exploring the specificity of artistic knowledge production in the context of exhibition making, art in public space projects, and the significance of research-based practices for the (reformulation of the) curriculum in the current art academy. Why not join him…

Further details here.