Durational Feminisms: Collectivity, Support and Intergenerational Exchange

The 2019 CAS Annual Conference brought together scholars, curators and museum professionals to consider significant recent initiatives in collecting, exhibitions and display, and the issues they raise.
In recent decades, notions of a fixed “canon”, or a single narrative in modern and contemporary art has come under question from all sides. Museums and galleries have been at the centre of the debate, playing an active part in revising art history. Modern art as a story of national histories and defined stylistic movements has come under scrutiny, with international museums adopting global, post‐colonial and supra‐national perspectives ranging far beyond the traditional Western‐centric model. Boundaries and hierarchies of value between different art forms have been dismantled. Issues of identity and representation have come to the fore, and renewed attention is being paid to museums’ responsibilities to their local communities.
How can museums keep pace and respond to these new imperatives? What happens when ‘the grand narratives’ are no longer considered fit for purpose? How are collections, exhibitions and displays to be rethought – according to what criteria, and for whom?