Doctoral Project: Die Kunstausstellung als kritische Zukunftswerkstatt? - Die Ausstellungspraxis des Kunstmuseums im Kontext der internationalen Debatten und progressiven Konzepte des Museumsdiskurses der 1960er und 70er Jahre.
In her doctoral project Johanna Wurz examines the museum discourse of the 1960s and ‘70s, analyzing it using contemporary publications about the museum crisis of the time and its consequences for museum practice and exhibition design. She focuses on the museum type of the art museum, whose development in the post-war period has come back into focus for research with recent findings on Nazi continuities in the first documenta in 1955. Taking off from this, the doctoral project traces those problem areas that emerged from the insufficient modernization of the art museum after the war. Themes such as democratizing culture through threshold reduction, institutional transparency, question of provenance, and the increased relationship of exhibition practice to the present, which ranges from better integration of contemporary art to negotiating social discourses in the museum represent important anchoring points. Working through progressive approaches to creating solutions, which emerged at the end of the 1960s, in part from the ruptures of the 1968 movement, are meant to demonstrate how much the art exhibition has changed, in theory and exhibition design, into a critical workshop on the future. The project will look not only at how these things have been taken up by museum practice, but also at the echoes of those discourses. Using historical discourse analysis, which determines the most relevant conflict areas in relation to the art museum, and by analyzing exhibition design in selected examples, the promotion projects will generate a typology of the art museum of the 1960s and ‘70s.
Short bio:
Since September 2021 Doctoral studies with Prof. Dr. Alexis Joachimides, Department of Art History and Aesthetics, Art History of the Modern Period, University of Kassel/Kunsthochschule Kassel
2020-2021 ResearchAssociate in the Department of Department of Art History and Aesthetics, Art History of the Modern Period, University of Kassel/Kunsthochschule Kassel
2017-2020 Masters studies in Art History and Aesthetics at the Kunsthochschule Kassel/University of Kassel, title of master’s thesis: der Der Katalog des Musée des Monuments Français als Medium der Demokratisierung kunsthistorischer Bildung?
Since 2018 voluntary and part-time work as a city guide, particular on the topics of architectural history, the culture of monuments in urban space, postcolonial reception of the Chinese village Mulang. (See „KulTourAgenten e. V.“ and „EssKulTouren“ (Dr. Bettina Becker)
11/2016
11/2016 lecture at the 91st Kunsthistorischer Studierendenkongress, Leipzig “Vermeintlich Anders” (Nov. 24-27, 2016): Exotismen als europäische Projektionsfläche der Aufklärung. Das ‚vermeintlich‘ chinesische Dorf Mou-lang (1781/82) in der Rolle einer inszenierten Utopie des Landgrafen Friedrich II. von Hessen-Kassel.
2014 - 2016 research assistant at the LOEWE-Schwerpunkt “Tier-Mensch-Gesellschaft” in the department of history.
2011-2017 Bachelor’s studies in Art History and Aesthetics and History at Kunsthochschule Kassel/University of Kassel; title of bachelor’s thesis: Zwischen Fremde und Dörflichem Idyll. Das chinesische Dorf Mou-lang im Repräsentationskontext des aufgeklärten Absolutismus Friedrichs II. von Hessen-Kassel.