Nizan Shaked
Address: Professor: Contemporary Art History, Museum and Curatorial Studies, School of Art, California State University Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Blvd. CA, 90840
1250 Bellflower Blvd. CA, 90840
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Books by Nizan Shaked
In the United States, institutions administered by the nonprofit system have an ambiguous status as they are neither entirely private nor fully public. Among nonprofits, the museum is unique as it is the only institution where trustees tend to collect the same objects they hold in “public trust” on behalf of the nation, if not humanity. The public serves as alibi for establishing the symbolic value of art, which sustains its monetary value and its markets.
This structure allows for wealthy individuals at the helm to gain financial benefits from, and ideological control over, what is at its core purpose a public system. The dramatic growth of the art market and the development of financial tools based on art-collateral loans exacerbate the contradiction between the needs of museum leadership versus that of the public. Indeed, a history of private support in the US is a history of racist discrimination, and the common collections reflect this fact.
A history of how private collections were turned public gives context. Since the late Renaissance, private collections legitimized the prince's right to rule, and later, with the great revolutions, display consolidated national identity. But the rise of the American museum reversed this and re-privatized the public collection. A materialist description of the museum as a model institution of the liberal nation state reveals constellations of imperialist social relations.
Articles by Nizan Shaked
The question of how to deal with primary historical materials considered disturbing, sensationalist, or upsetting is taken up in revisionist histories in visual culture. Although their strategies differ greatly, Carrie Mae Weems and Ken Gonzales-Day both work with the problem of historical narrative concealment. Each of these artists has made visible the historical data neglected in mainstream historical accounts and exposed the very processes of erasure inherent in institutional narratives. Acknowledging that historical materials are themselves mediated cultural objects, their works point not only to painful histories of exploitation and injustice but also to the ways in which those conditions have been framed by history or ignored by it. This essay shows the different modes by which the two artists relocated history in the present day, confronting the master narrative of history as constructed and/or censored yet having a concrete effect on living bodies.1 To reveal history’s Janus-headed operation, these artists take on the role of historian, their work a form of revisionist history.
In the United States, institutions administered by the nonprofit system have an ambiguous status as they are neither entirely private nor fully public. Among nonprofits, the museum is unique as it is the only institution where trustees tend to collect the same objects they hold in “public trust” on behalf of the nation, if not humanity. The public serves as alibi for establishing the symbolic value of art, which sustains its monetary value and its markets.
This structure allows for wealthy individuals at the helm to gain financial benefits from, and ideological control over, what is at its core purpose a public system. The dramatic growth of the art market and the development of financial tools based on art-collateral loans exacerbate the contradiction between the needs of museum leadership versus that of the public. Indeed, a history of private support in the US is a history of racist discrimination, and the common collections reflect this fact.
A history of how private collections were turned public gives context. Since the late Renaissance, private collections legitimized the prince's right to rule, and later, with the great revolutions, display consolidated national identity. But the rise of the American museum reversed this and re-privatized the public collection. A materialist description of the museum as a model institution of the liberal nation state reveals constellations of imperialist social relations.
The question of how to deal with primary historical materials considered disturbing, sensationalist, or upsetting is taken up in revisionist histories in visual culture. Although their strategies differ greatly, Carrie Mae Weems and Ken Gonzales-Day both work with the problem of historical narrative concealment. Each of these artists has made visible the historical data neglected in mainstream historical accounts and exposed the very processes of erasure inherent in institutional narratives. Acknowledging that historical materials are themselves mediated cultural objects, their works point not only to painful histories of exploitation and injustice but also to the ways in which those conditions have been framed by history or ignored by it. This essay shows the different modes by which the two artists relocated history in the present day, confronting the master narrative of history as constructed and/or censored yet having a concrete effect on living bodies.1 To reveal history’s Janus-headed operation, these artists take on the role of historian, their work a form of revisionist history.