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Hanging Emily : exhibition strategies and Emily Carr Knutson, Karen Leslie

Abstract

This study examines the impact of new museological theory on museum education practice at the Vancouver Art Gallery in relation to a re-installation of Emily Carr's work. It is a case study that concerns both the negotiation of meanings around Emily Carr's work as they are situated within current and traditional art historical/ historical beliefs, and the desire to offer museum visitors a more sufficient or comprehensive educational experience. The dissertation examines the installation of Carr in a variety of galleries across Canada (National Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Vancouver Art Gallery) as a means of contextualizing a range of problems associated with museum practice. The National Gallery chapter explores issues of ideology raised by the new museology. The chapter concerning the display at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria concerns the particularities of site and place (Victoria was Carr's birthplace) as well as notions of resonance and contextualization in art displays. The discussion of the Art Gallery of Ontario concerns contextualization of a different sort, the display created with a solid foundation in educational literature. A temporary exhibition of Carr's work juxtaposed with that of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun in Vancouver offers an entry point into a discussion of subjectivity and curatorial epistemic authority, while the resulting re-installation of Carr at the Vancouver Art Gallery (the case) is explored as one possible approach to issues raised in the earlier chapters, by the challenges of post-modem theorists to historical understanding, historiography, and museum practice.

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