Queering Curatorial Learning Practice: Enhancing Access for Young and Diverse Audiences within the Art Museum

泰特美术馆馆长玛丽亚·巴尔肖的目标是使泰特美术馆成为“世界上最具艺术冒险精神和文化包容性的画廊”。在一份声明中，巴尔肖将这两个目标结合在一起，发出了一个关于艺术卓越和包容性之间关系的强有力的信息，这暗示了泰特的战略愿景可能会如何改变和发展，以实现这一目标。这一建议认为，在这种愿景可以通过吸引年轻和多样化的观众参与将艺术博物馆转变为“艺术冒险和文化包容”的公民空间的过程，随着我们观众的人口结构发生变化--伦敦的白色英国人口不再是这座城市最主要的人口，年轻人越来越多地认同异性恋和顺性别（认同一个人出生时被分配的性别）--我们如何利用这一点来传达这一新的愿景？利用三个相互关联的元素-学习计划，泰特收藏的艺术品和酷儿理论-这个提案将探索文化机构如何保持相关性，激进性和可持续性。利用泰特收藏和档案馆的作品，研究人员将在三年的学生期间通过举办与观众，艺术家和泰特集体设计的实验研究活动，以在线档案的形式创建一个研究工具包，（理想情况下，这将由泰特学习研究中心主办，与泰特数字团队就如何工作的会谈将在项目确认后开始）酷儿研究在理论上已经得到了很好的研究，本提案旨在寻求将这种学习转化为（艺术学习）实践的方法。如何使用“酷儿”、“交叉”和“跨学科”等术语作为批判性思考和实践的方法或视角？例如，将酷儿方法论视为“出发点，[一个]工作概念”（Boellstorff，2016）或交叉性作为“将其定位为节点而不是封闭系统-一个对重叠和冲突进行开放式调查的聚集地”（Cho，Crenshaw，McCall，2013）。从本质上讲，这些术语是流动的、复杂的和不固定的，这就是它们对艺术博物馆可能的学术和方法论价值。正如泰特美术馆青年项目召集人马克·米勒（Mark Miller）所说，通过Circuit等项目，“开放”和“揭开画廊的神秘面纱”“产生了对艺术的另类解读、观众之间的调解以及对画廊在社会中的作用的批判性质疑”（米勒，2017）。换句话说，艺术博物馆不再是一个静态的艺术宝库，而是一个艺术、艺术家和观众之间多样化和复杂对话的聚集地。米勒认为，观众是核心，为了使观众产生这种影响的机构，他们必须有代理和信任它。这一建议提出了如何“去神秘化”可能会工作（而不是简单地通过同化的年轻人到已经建立的系统）。

Tate's Director Maria Balshaw aims to make Tate the 'most artistically adventurous and culturally inclusive gallery in the world' In bringing these two ambitions together in one statement, Balshaw sends a powerful message about the relationship between artistic excellence and inclusivity, which hints at how Tate's strategic vision may change and develop in order to achieve this goal.This proposal considers the ways in which this vision could be realised specifically through engaging young and diverse audiences in the process of transforming the art museum into an 'artistically adventurous and culturally inclusive' civic space. As the demographic of our audiences change - London's White British population is no longer the city's most dominant and young people are increasingly identifying as something other than heterosexual and cisgendered (to identify with the gender one is assigned at birth) - how can we draw on this to inform this new vision? Using three interlocking elements - learning programmes, artworks in the Tate Collection and queer theory - this proposal will explore how cultural institutions remain relevant, radical and sustainable. Using works from the Tate Collection and Archive, the researcher would over three years of the studentship test ways in which the relationship between these three elements can be "queered" through hosting experimental research events devised with audience, artists and Tate Collective, creating a research tool kit in the form of online archive (ideally this will be hosted by the Tate Learning Research Centre, talks with the Tate Digital team on how this can work will begin on confirmation of the project) and producing a written thesis detailing their findings.Queer Studies have been well researched theoretically and this proposal seeks ways to translate this learning into (arts learning) practice. How can terms like 'queer', 'intersectional' and 'interdisciplinary' be used as methods or lenses through which to think and practice critically? For example, thinking about a queer methodology as a 'point of departure, [a] working concept' (Boellstorff, 2016) or intersectionality as 'pos[ing] more as a nodal point than as a closed system - a gathering place for open-ended investigations of the overlapping and conflicting' (Cho, Crenshaw, McCall, 2013). In essence, terms like these are fluid, complex and unfixed and herein lies their possible academic and methodological value to the art museum. As Mark Miller, Convenor of Tate's Young People's Programme remarks, 'opening up' and 'demystify[ing] the gallery' through programmes like Circuit have 'produced alternative interpretations of art, mediation between audience and critical questioning of the role of galleries in society' (Miller, 2017). In other words, anun-fixing of the art museum as a static repository for art, in favour of a gathering place of diverse and complex dialogue between art, artists and audience. Miller argues that the audiences are central to this, and that in order for an audience to produce this effect on the institution they must have agency and trust within it. This proposal asks how this 'demystifying' might work (and not simply through an assimilation of young people into already established systems).