Wurz, Johanna

Wurz, Johanna

Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin | Neuere Kunstgeschichte

Doctoral Project: „Vom Dunkelmuseum zur Dekonstruktion. Eine Fallstudie zur Demokratisierung des Kunstmuseums im westeuropäischen Kontext in den 1960er und 70er Jahren“

In her doctoral research project, Johanna Wurz examines permanent exhibitions of art from the 1960s and 1970s that responded in innovative ways to the educational and museum crises unfolding in Western Europe at the time. One key starting point for the study is the tendency in the 1960s to embed educational approaches and expertise within museums, institutions that had hitherto been shaped predominantly by scholarly and scientific priorities, and to provide new audiences with access to the cultural heritage on display. The central research question is how these objectives were implemented in the design of new permanent art exhibitions and in the educational and interpretive formats accompanying them. Particular emphasis is placed on the discursive negotiation of a new vision of the democratic museum, which, in this initial phase, was defined above all by the removal of barriers and improved accessibility for groups with limited access to formal education. The art museum occupies a particular position in the analysis of historical sources, as it served as a negative example of what was to be avoided or even abolished: the decontextualized, abstract display of art, which presupposed prior knowledge and a particular cultural habitus. New approaches to placing artworks within the exhibition space in sensory, associative, or contextually illuminating settings are of particular interest, especially in connection with the use of accentuated art lighting and darkened galleries.

The doctoral project also examines a second phase in the democratization of the museum, which developed in the wake of the 1968 protest movements and in the years that followed. A defining feature of the museum crisis at its height was the expansion of the democratic museum’s ambitions to include participation and the critical examination of the processes through which museums construct and confer meaning. Around 1970, the art museum, increasingly criticized as an elitist temple of art, was expected not only to provide educational support for understanding the works on display but also to call its own authority to interpret and define meaning into question. A further focus of the project is how this new dimension of criticism affected the practical design of art museum exhibitions and the expectations placed on visitors. Under the banner of institutional self-criticism, and in response to the desire to integrate the museum more closely with the everyday structures and patterns of behavior of its surrounding urban environment, the exhibition space itself became subject to deconstruction. Flexible partition walls and storage-inspired arrangements took on a particular function within this newly conceived, emancipatory museum, as they were seen to offer the potential to foster emancipation and critical thinking in the encounter with art.

Since this period in museum history is commonly described as a museum boom, owing to the large number of new museum buildings constructed at the time, it offers a wide range of potential case studies. The project’s methodology is therefore guided specifically by approaches that contemporary sources identified as particularly innovative or controversial. Accordingly, the selected museums are those that, at the time, met the aforementioned expectations of a democratic art museum and served as models for, or adopted, new design and educational strategies. In doing so, the doctoral project bridges the gap between internationally recognized case studies that received particular attention in specialist journals and examples from West Germany that sought to implement emerging trends in museum practice within a local context. These include the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City (1963–1964); the museum complex in Berlin-Dahlem comprising the Museum of Ethnology and the museums of East Asian, Islamic, and Indian Art (1966–1973); Kulturhuset in Stockholm (1965–1975); and the Sprengel Museum Hannover (1973–1979).
 

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)

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.