University of Heidelberg

Jour Fixe on World Art Museum

Jan 12, 2012

"Does Germany need another museum?" asked Prof. Kitty Zijlmans of Leiden University in her lecture "Strange Encounters: the World Art Museum as Agora, Poliphony or Tower of Babel?" at the Karl Jaspers Centre on Thursday afternoon. The Jour Fixe was organised by Research Area D "Historicities & Heritage".  

Under the title "Strange Encounters: the World Art Museum as Agora, Poliphony or Tower of Babel?", Prof. Kitty Zijlmans critically discussed the plans for a new World Art Museum in the German capital. Since Berlin already houses a Museum der Kulturen der Welt, one can wonder what a World Art Museum would (have to) look like, especially because world art often all look quite alike with a fixed canon of a rather small corpus of artists, predominantly white, male and Western, Zijlmans argued.

Kitty Zijlmans is Professor of Contemporary Art History and Theory at the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University since 2000. In January 2010, she was accepted as member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and since January 2011 she is Director of Leiden University Institute for Cultural Disciplines. Her main interest is in the fields of contemporary art, art theory, and methodology. She is also especially interested in the ongoing intercultural processes and globalization of the (art) world, and increasingly collaborates and exchanges with artists in the context of the field of artistic research. Her recent publications include Kitty Zijlmans et al., The Unwanted Land. Tiong Ang / David Bade/  Dirk de Bruyn / Sonja van Kerkhoff / Renée Ridgway / Rudi Struik. Zwolle: Waanders in collab. with museum Beelden aan Zee 2010; Kitty Zijlmans & Wilfried van Damme (eds.), World Art Studies. Exploring Concepts and Approaches. Amsterdam: Valiz 2008; Kitty Zijlmans, Rob Zwijnenberg, Krien Clevis (eds.), CO-OPs. Exploring new territories in art and science. Work in progress. Amsterdam: Buitenkant 2007.

The event took place on Thursday from 4 to 6 pm at the Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies, room 212. It was organised by Prof. Monica Juneja on behalf of research area D "Historicities & Heritage". Chaired by Prof. Monica Juneja, the research area analyses different concepts of histories as competing interpretations of time and space. The Jour Fixe is a regular event of the Cluster of Excellence "Asia and Europe in a Global Context", always organised by another research area.

An abstract of Prof. Zijlmans' talk is available in the event calendar.