<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in light of current concerns around mediation and museum pedagogy, proposals by artists who participate in the trend toward institutional critique, and even those by any of the artists regularly invited by museums, seem to overly conform to the \u201cuniform pattern that leads from a transmitter to a receiver,\u201d as museologists Serge Chaumier and Fran\u00e7ois Mairesse put it. Although these interventions have the ability to provoke thought and stimulate attention, members of the public are not led to take their reflections beyond themselves, for they remain spectators. Increasingly, however, museums are seeking to have their visitors take a more active role in the construction of their knowledge and the development of their critical thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The importance today of all individuals\u2019 involvement in learning in the museum context is prompting some museums to promote art practices that are more interactive or collaborative. For example, the Manchester Art Gallery\u2019s invitation to Sonia Boyce to produce a site-specific performance was meant to confront the public with the persistence of sexist stereotypes in a context deeply informed by the #MeToo movement. A crucial figure in British Black Art, Boyce is also a researcher, and at the time of the invitation she was directing the Black Artists and Modernism project, one component of which was to show that the modernist narrative, as currently presented in the exhibition programming of British museums, is no longer representative of the communities in which it is engaged. She enriches her examination of the metanarrative with a feminist critique that highlights not only the absence of women artists in museum shows but also the reductive image of the female body, displayed as a strictly aesthetic appreciation of the nude, thus setting a woman\u2019s identity in a sexist, androcentric imaginative framework.^{2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 2 <\/a> - Voir Sophie Orlando, Sonia Boyce: Thoughtful Disobedience, Dijon, Les Presses du r\u00e9el, 2018.<\/span>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\n

If the Manchester Art Gallery\u2019s objective in inviting Boyce was to confront visitors with her critical reflections on the representation of women in art, it also proceeded from an interest in her creative process. Since the 1990s, Boyce has addressed her concerns in the framework of collaborative and studio projects from which, in turn, she conceives her performances and video installations. Based on the \u201cgift of speech,\u201d her creative process and the receiving experience of her performative work invite the public to take part in the elaboration of meaning, to translate and interpret her interrogations, and to participate in the dialogue that she establishes.^{3<\/sup><\/a><\/span>} 3 <\/a> - Oph\u00e9lie Naessens, \u00ab Pratiques collaboratives dans l\u2019art contemporain ; de la cr\u00e9ation d\u2019espaces de dialogue \u00e0 la production d\u2019un discours critique \u00bb, <bit.ly\/31yCtKn>.<\/span>. In the context of the museum, her practice is an opportune means for encouraging members of the public to use their own experiences in interpreting what she has set before them. Not only does she draw them into the process of a new work based on a particular approach to the collections, but she also stimulates discussion about these collections and the discourses they sustain. By establishing such conversational situations, her collaborative practice enables the development of the public\u2019s active and critical gaze as well as the brief transformation of the museum into a forum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Manchester Art Gallery<\/em>, Boyce first set up a discussion with members of the conservation team, representatives of its regular clientele, and drag artists. The aim was to gather their impressions about the representation of gender in the galleries devoted to Victorian painting, along with the perceptions that might be elicited by a display under such thematic \u00adtitles as \u201cThe Pursuit of Beauty.\u201d The reflections developed during this process contributed to the conceptualization of a site-specific performance; Boyce then extended these reflections into the permanent collection itself by creating a space for discussion within it. At the end of the performance, a work by John William Waterhouse, Hylas and the Nymphs<\/em>, portraying the fatal encounter of Hercules\u2019s companion with the Nymphs as he comes to fetch water from the river, was taken down and replaced by a poster that stated the reasons for replacing the painting and proffered a series of questions, to which visitors were invited to respond on Post-it notes laid out on a table: \u201cWe have left a temporary space here in place of Hylas and the Nymphs<\/em> by J. W. Waterhouse to prompt conversation about how we display and interpret artworks in Manchester\u2019s public collection. How can we talk about the collection in ways which are relevant in the 21st century? Here are some of the ideas we have been talking about so far. What do you think? This gallery presents the female body as either a passive decorative form or a femme fatale. Let\u2019s challenge this Victorian fantasy! The Gallery exists in a world full of intertwined issues of gender, race, sexuality and class, which affect us all. How could artworks speak in more contemporary, relevant ways? What other stories could these artworks and their characters tell? What other themes would be interesting to explore in the gallery?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n