Museums, Galleries and Utopia

It turned out I misunderstood the "Utopia" homework brief a little.

We were expected to come up with simplistic ideas like "a world without war" and "happy families" rather than my more specific (but still Utopian) ways of how society might be better organised.

Anyhow, Thursday's session on museums and galleries, their purpose and the way in which exhibits within them are organised (or curated in museum/gallery parlance), resulted in small amount of  homework:

Research controversies surrounding Tate Modern, the implication being that  I should have known about a big one that's current at the moment.

I'm a bit non-plussed.   Wikipedia's "Tate" listing has a whole section labelled "Controversies" -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tate

- but none of them seem that "hot".

I suppose Mary, our lecturer,  is referring to the most recent entry in the Wikipedia list, concerning oil company BP's sponsorship of the Tate - one of the focuses of the "Art Not Oil" group:

http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/about

Check out a Guardian article on the latest "protest" in April of this year:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/apr/24/liberate-tate-arts-bp

By the way, I've got my own axe to grind over Tate Modern.  Check out these previous posts:

My thoughts on art galleries and museums
My Art Manifesto


"A Very Moving Perpetual Festival"

In the class on Thursday, we were split into groups and asked to come up with a way of "curating" the Utopian ideas we'd developed for homework - and we were encouraged to think outside the box.

Our group came up with an idea that really tickled me because it was Utopian in itself.

Under the  "art by and for everyone" banner we proposed closing the M25 and staging a perpetual festival of art on it.

As the festival would cause the whole of London to seize up, it would get huge media coverage and attract millions of people from all over the world.

The festival would move slowly forward around the M25 ring as new artists and visitors joined the front and worked their way through the festival to leave from the back.

I liked the idea so much I rather hijacked presenting it, and then omitted to say the magic phrase "a very moving perpetual festival" (sorry!) but I think people got the idea.  I spotted Mary giggling.