Lecture in charge of Frances Morris, Director of the Tate Modern, organized by the Chair of Artistic Studies. 20th / 21st centuries

Title of the lecture: Gender, Generation and Geography: discovering a bigger history

Frances Morris Biography 

Frances Morris has played a key role in the development of Tate, joining as a curator in 1987, becoming Head of Displays at Tate Modern (2000–2006) and then Director of Collection, International Art until April 2016 when she was appointed as Director, Tate Modern.

She has continually worked to re-imagine Tate’s collection and has been instrumental in developing its international reach and its representation of women artists. Frances was jointly responsible for the initial presentation of the opening collection displays at Tate Modern in 2000, which radically transformed the way museums present the story of modern art. She has curated landmark exhibitions, many of which were large-scale international collaborations, including three major retrospectives of women artists including Louise Bourgeois in 2007, Yayoi Kusama in 2012 and Agnes Martin in 2015.

Earlier in her career Frances Morris curated Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism in 1993 and in 1995 she worked with Stuart Morgan on the exhibition Rites of Passage. Specialising in post-war European and contemporary international art, she has published widely on the subject and has also curated projects with many contemporary artists from Britain and abroad, including Miroslaw Balka, Chris Burden, Genevieve Cadieux, Sophie Calle, Mark Dion, Luciano Fabro, Paul McCarthy and Nicholas Pope.

Frances holds a BA in History of Art from Cambridge University and an MA in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She is a Board member at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, a Board member of CIMAM and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto.

CHAIR OF ARTISTIC STUDIES. 20th/21st CENTURIES

IVAM-UV-UPV (Institut Valencià d’Art Modern-Universitat de València-Universitat Politècnica de València-Universidad Miguel Hernández)

Directors: Juan Vicente Aliaga / Vicente Sánchez-Biosca

The life in images of contemporary culture outruns the (material and immaterial) traditional spaces in which they were entrapped in the past, even the recent past. Their genres and registers, their ambits of circulation, their ceaseless migrations give the impression of offering a previously unknown experience of the real at the same time as, in an apparent paradox, they display a not in the least feigned technological pride.

Nevertheless, however much studies of the History of Art, Fine Arts, Journalism and Audiovisual Communication have attempted to adapt to the demands of this state of affairs, the lability of the borders between creation and reflection, technology and art, the media and the collective imaginary, among others, requires more ductile ambits of reflection and debate than those to be found in university studies and traditional research. On the other hand, unlike classical philology, palaeography, the exegesis of written texts and the image still presents an imbalance between its (emotional, conceptual, political, memory-based) impact and the instruments provided to analyse it.

The aim of Cátedra Estudios Artísticos, arising from the collaboration between the University of Valencia, the Polytechnic University of Valencia and the IVAM, will consist in encouraging this reflection about the life of images both in the world of art and in social life, including imaginary. It will do so broadmindedly, avoiding academic, artistic or technological restrictions, but, nevertheless, thriving on and taking advantage of all the academic, museum-based and institutional aids at its disposal. For that reason, the fact that it is held at the IVAM is propitious because it can enrich its activities with the reflection about exhibitions, installations or lectures, and also the series of projections.