Lecture “Performing the museum” in charge of Suzanne Cotter, Director of the Serralves Museum, organized by the Chair of Artistic Studies. 20th / 21st centuries

Lecture “Performing the museum” in charge of Suzanne Cotter, Director of the Serralves Museum, organized by the Chair of Artistic Studies. 20th / 21st centuries

Suzanne Cotter Biography 

Suzanne Cotter has been Director of the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto since 2013. Before taking up her functions at Serralves, Cotter was Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation Curator for the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi Project, where she was responsible for the development of the programme for the future museum and played a leading role in the building of the museum´s collection. Previously, Cotter was Senior Curator and Deputy Director at Modern Art Oxford, Oxford between 2002 and 2009 where she organised major monographic and group exhibitions on modern and contemporary art and performance, and curator of exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, London (1999-2002). She also has occupied curatorial positions at the Whitechapel Gallery, and at the Serpentine Gallery, also in London. Curator of the10th Sharjah Biennial, in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates in 2011 with Rasha Salti, Cotter has edited and contributed to numerous publications and major art journals including Artforum, Frieze and Bidoun. In 2005 she was awarded the L’Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres for her service to the Arts.

CHAIR OF ARTISTIC STUDIES. 20th/21st CENTURIES

IVAM-UV-UPV-UMH (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.