Ep 89: Museums

I love museums. I miss going to them but am glad there are so many museums with online exhibits and programming. Today we’re talking about museums with Amanda Cachia, an independent curator and critic from Sydney, Australia who is now based in the U.S. She received her PhD in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the University of California San Diego in 2017. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art; curatorial studies and activism; exhibition design and access; decolonizing the museum; and the politics of embodied disability language in visual culture. You’ll hear Amanda talk about her scholarship and work as a disabled curator, museum accessibility during this pandemic, how curators can make accessibility part of their practices, and how technology can bring people closer to art in new ways. Transcript [Google doc] [PDF] Related Links Alt-Text as Poetry, Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan No longer in extremis. Andrea Montiel de Shuman, June 15, 2020, Medium.com Curators Urge Guggenheim to Fix Culture That ‘Enables Racism,’ Robin Pogrebin, June 22, 2020, The New York Times. How to Make Art in a Pandemic? Khairani Barokka, June 2020, Art Monthly. The Museum Does Not Exist, Dana Kopel, May 13, 2020, SSENSE How Colonial Visual Cultures Have Worsened This Pandemic and What Needs To Change, Khairani Barokka, April 13, 2020, Disability Visibility Project. Ep 72: Disabled Curators with Anna Berry, March 8, 2020, Disability Visibility podcast. What Does It Mean to Be an Accessible Museum? Francesca Rosenberg, November 16, 2017, Museum of Modern Art. Smithsonian Standards and Guidelines for Accessibility and Accessible Exhibition Design 1/4 Take a seat, stay awhile As part of our #MetAccess program, we're inviting Disabled artists to respond to works from the #MetCollection that spark curiosity or inspiration. Today, Shannon Finnegan (@shanfinnegan) shares her thoughts on this 19th-century folding armchair: pic.twitter.com/kzGwF4mEWI — The Metropolitan Museum of Art (@metmuseum) August 10, 2020 About A short-statured woman with long brown curly hair and brown eyes stands in the middle of a white cube gallery space, smiling at the camera. She is wearing red lipstick to match the red and white scarf wrapped around her neck. On every wall of the gallery space hangs contemporary art that includes brightly-colored photographs of abstract shapes, a round wooden ring hanging from the ceiling, a black and white video installation of a sign language interpreter and a low-lying red lounge chair on a mat. The ceiling is exposed so all the beams, wiring and fan ducts are visible. Amanda Cachia is an independent curator and critic from Sydney, Australia. She received her PhD in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the University of California San Diego in 2017. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art; curatorial studies and activism; exhibition design and access; decolonizing the museum; and the politics of embodied disability language in visual culture. She is currently working on two book projects: a monograph based on her dissertation entitled In My Language: Translation in Contemporary Disability Art solicited by Duke University Press, and the edited volume Curating Access: Disability Art Activism and Creative Accommodation for Routledge that includes over 30 contributors from around the world. Cachia currently teaches art history, visual culture, and curatorial studies at Otis College of Art and Design, California Institute of the Arts, California State University Long Beach, and California State University San Marcos. She serves as caa.reviews Field Editor for West Coast Exhibitions (2020-2023). Twitter: @AmandaCachia2 Support Disability Media and Culture DONATE to the Disability Visibility Project® Credits Cheryl Green, Audio Producer and Text Transcript Alice Wong, Writer, Audio Producer, Host Lateef McLeod, Introduction Mike Mort, Artwork Theme Music (used with permission of artist) Song: “Dance Off” Artist: Wheelchair Sports Camp Music “Awakenings” and “Vantage Points” by Ketsa (Source: freemusicarchive.org. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 license). Sounds “VOCODER countdown” by Jack_Master. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License. “8 Bit Beeping Computer Sounds” by sheepfilms. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons 0 License.