Sonia Boyce Cheddar Gorgeous, performances durant la réalisation du projet Six Acts,Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, U.K., 2018.
Photos : Andrew Brooks

The Pedagogical Contribution of Sonia Boyce’s Intervention at the Manchester Art Gallery

Ariane Lemieux

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As early as the late 1960s, criticism of the authority and hermeticism of traditional gallery displays induced museums to consider the existence of a plurality of points of view and of more subjective and interactive approaches to their collections.¹ 1 - Dominique Poulot, Patrimoine et musées : L’institution de la culture, Paris, Hachette Supérieur (Carré Histoire), 2014.. At the end of the 1970s, museum curators’ recognition of creative works proposing a critical reflection on museum operations and the meaning of the collections — notable examples being those by Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, and Hans Haacke, as well as Michael Asher, Louise Lawler, and Andrea Fraser — created opportunities for offering new points of view on the collections and stimulating new connections between the institution and its public. By eliciting appraisals, often transgressive — even counter-discourses — of the collections, the origins of their acquisition, or the significance of their conservation, museums aimed to awaken an inquiring frame of mind among members of the public with respect to what was set before them, beyond aesthetic questions.

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