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（Maria Balshaw）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美术馆”。巴尔肖将这两个目标结合在一起，发出了一个强有力的信息，即艺术卓越与包容性之间的关系，这暗示了泰特美术馆的战略愿景如何改变和发展，以实现这一目标。该提案考虑了实现这一愿景的具体方式，即在将艺术博物馆转变为“艺术冒险和文化包容”的公民空间的过程中，吸引年轻和不同的观众。随着我们受众人口结构的变化——伦敦的英国白人不再是这个城市最主要的人口，年轻人越来越多地认同异性恋和顺性别（即认同一个人出生时被赋予的性别）以外的东西——我们如何利用这一点来传达这个新的愿景？通过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——该提案将探索文化机构如何保持相关性、激进性和可持续性。使用泰特收藏和档案馆的作品，研究人员将在三年的学生测试中，通过主办与观众，艺术家和泰特集体设计的实验性研究活动，创建一个以在线档案形式的研究工具包（理想情况下，这将由泰特学习研究中心主办），这三个元素之间的关系可以“酷”起来。与Tate Digital团队讨论如何在项目确认后开始工作)，并撰写一篇详细说明他们发现的书面论文。酷儿研究已经在理论上得到了很好的研究，这个建议寻求将这种学习转化为（艺术学习）实践的方法。像“酷儿”、“交叉”和“跨学科”这样的术语如何被用作批判性思考和实践的方法或镜头？例如，将酷儿方法论视为一个“出发点，一个工作概念”（Boellstorff, 2016），或将交叉性视为“更像是一个节点，而不是一个封闭的系统——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、不固定的，这就是它们对艺术博物馆可能具有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，“开放”和“去神秘化”画廊，通过像“巡回”这样的项目，“产生了对艺术的另一种解释，调解了观众和对画廊在社会中角色的批判性质疑”（Miller, 2017）。换句话说，艺术博物馆不再是一个静态的艺术储存库，而是一个艺术、艺术家和观众之间进行多样化和复杂对话的聚集地。米勒认为，受众是这一点的核心，为了让受众对机构产生这种影响，他们必须在机构内部拥有代理和信任。该提案询问这种“去神秘化”可能如何起作用（而不仅仅是通过将年轻人同化到已经建立的系统中）。

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).