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Confront the Canon�Examine Museum Collection and Exhibition Practices

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DH Intro Course Final Project Proposal

Lini Radhakrishnan

Fall 2024

OBJECTIVE

Confront the art canon and examine the practices that determine whose history is represented.

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CENTRAL QUESTION

How does the institution’s collection and curatorial practices contribute to the marginalization of non-Western art, women artists and artists of color? 

APPROACH

Active user engagement to introduce interventions in select past exhibitions to design more equitable displays.  

DH METHOD

Biased and missing data requires data feminism (Klein), postcolonial digital pedagogy approach (Risam) and open pedagogy practice that encourages active engagement of the participants in knowledge production.

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Project Inspiration: Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum, 1992

Metalwork

Truth Trophy

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Confront the Canon: Project Scope & Phases

SCOPE: Restricted to a single past exhibition showcase designed to build the

basic framework of the project that can be scaled up eventually.

PHASE 1

Past Exhibition Dataset Creation

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PHASE 2

Intervention Object Dataset Creation

PHASE 3

Object Intervention Selection

PHASE 4

Final Online Display

  • Past Exhibition selection
  • Data parsing
  • Populate dataset
  • Identify search parameters
  • Scrape museum catalog
  • Create the Intervention Object Dataset

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  • Display past & intervention panels for swap
  • Accept intervention object/ suggestion and context labels
  • Display newly curated exhibition with flagged interventions

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