Arts and Audiences 1

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This course focuses on the relationship between arts and audiences. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach and builds on perspectives coming from academic fields such as (art) history, sociology, pedagogy, philosophy, and critical museology as well as professional practices such as education, policy, marketing and curatorship. It aims to show students the diverse ways in which art institutions relate to, interact with and impact audiences. The course is firmly grounded both in academic scholarly works and professional practices. Lectures will offer overviews on the topics at hand and present diverse positions and dominant theories in the field. Workshops will offer focused work on academic literature related to the topics as well as hands-on professional training and real site analysis (visitor research, space analysis, etc). Debates will train your critical thinking and introduce you to controversial topics in the field, allow you to form an opinion and defend it through structured argumentation.   

In period 3 you will be introduced to key developments concerning the ever-changing relationship between arts and their audiences. First you will study changing notions of ‘visitors’, ‘audiences’, ‘users’ and ‘the public’ looking at the historical and sociological context of the various definitions of the concepts and the implications of varying terminologies on academic and professional ways of studying audiences. You will study and critically question concepts such as ‘audience engagement’ and ‘cultural participation’ by drawing on literature from a range of fields. In your investigations, you will also consider the existence of a non-audience and why one would be interested to study non-participants. You will debate around issues related to cultural participation, authority in the art institutions and agency in the museum. Building on such considerations, you will continue your investigations looking at questions related to recent developments and broader notions of audience engagement. You will investigate and debate topics such as inclusion, representation in the arts and multivocality in the museum. Following on the different forms of engagement, you will then consider the impact of space on audiences, including traditional white cubes, post-industrial and public spaces as well as digital spaces. Particular attention will be paid to multi-sensory exhibition strategies.