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Slide 1: Hello, my name is Kaitlyn German and I was the USRI Intern of Professor John Hatch this summer. Slide 2: The goal of my USRI internship under Professor Hatch was to conduct research and find academic articles for Professor Hatch to aid in the design of a university undergraduate course. As such, there was a steady amount of research that was required in order to properly find information on the topics that Professor Hatch requested. To further my researching skills, I attended various Professional Development sessions including: Intro to Literature Searches and Information Evaluation, wherein I learned about the various databases that were available to look up academic papers and articles, How to Research, Write and Use Materials Safely, wherein I learned more about finding the correct articles for my field of research, Organizing your Research with Reference Management Tools, which was helpful in showing how to optimize metadata organization with regards to having academic articles easily accessible, Developing your CV or Resume, which will be useful in applying to Masters programs, Publishing Your Work: De-Mystifying the Process, wherein I learned about the benefits of publishing in academia and A Graduate School Primer, which aided me in learning about the Masters application process compared to the Undergraduate application process. I took all of the information provided to me in the Professional Development sessions and applied it in my research, greatly benefiting not only myself but the results I garnered for Professor Hatch. Additionally, I learned more about the structure of an Undergraduate course through the organization of the research needed to compile enough information to create a functioning course. In my communications with Professor Hatch, I was asked my opinion on areas in a course such as assignment and reading structure, and I feel that entering course planning from the point of view of an undergraduate student benefitted me in being able to offer a reasonable amount of homework in tandem with assigned readings. For example, in discussing the lengths of weekly readings, I voiced my opinion in stating that I have found that twenty-five to thirty pages, or roughly one long or two shorter articles, a week, would be sufficient in adding a supplementary source for students to consider across their learning experience throughout the course. I was then able to tailor my research to shorter, more concise, articles that were more student-friendly in terms of length and clarity. Slide 3: The main topic of my research included exhibitions across history that seemed more like works of art then the artworks which were showcased within them. The range of my coverage extended form the early 20th century to contemporary curatorial practices in today’s artistic climate. I began with the Secession Beethoven Exhibition of 1902, which, although displaying beautiful works of art inspired by Beethoven, was made even more fascinating by the building in which the works were displayed, since the architecture was new for the time and showcased innovative ways in which to design exhibitions. I included material on the pieces that appeared in the exhibition itself, focusing on Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze and the room which was designed exclusively for the Frieze’s exhibition. I also included information on the Secession building as well as the Vienna Secession art movement and the different kinds of architecture appearing in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. Next, I moved onto the Museum of Modern Art’s 1934 exhibition entitled Machine Art and the American architect Philip Johnson as well as the concept of modernity in the 1930s and how this effected Machine Art as an exhibition within the Museum of Modern Art. Next, my research turned more towards exhibitions where the curators acted more as artists and their piece of art was the exhibition itself. Th exhibition could be seen as the canvas, the curator, the painter, and the pieces of art within, the globs of paint, so to speak. The 1938 International Exhibition of Surrealism, or L'Exposition International du Surréalisme as it was originally known, comprised an art exhibition curated exclusively by artists, thus giving way to a quirky and different, but wholly artistic method of exhibiting art pieces. Although the 1938 International Exhibition of Surrealism was curated by a group of artists, Daniel Spoerri’s Restaurant de la Galerie J of 1963 began my research into singular, unique shows curated by artists, making the exhibitions turn more into an artistic experience then mere showings of art. Spoerri’s exhibition even had participatory elements for viewers to participate in by way of transforming the gallery into a literal restaurant for patrons to eat and then, once everyone had eaten and left, Spoerri would come and preserve the leavings, thus creating fantastical tableaus of meals just eaten for an audience to view, providing multiple layers of experience in the viewing of his exhibition. With Les Immatériaux of 1985, I focused again on the curator as artist principle in my research, including various primary source interviews with the curator, Jean-François Lyotard, as well as how Les Immatériaux began a new genre of exhibition for art pieces. Slide 4: When approaching research for the Independent Group, I sectioned it off into three exhibitions all curated by the Independent Group: Parallel of Life and Art from 1953, Man, Machine and Motion from 1955, and This is Tomorrow from 1956. Although much of my research combined these three shows and intertwined the information about them, all centering around the Independent Group, the exhibitions worked as case studies for a broader understanding of the way that the Independent Group worked to display art for the public. I then turned my focus to two stand out curators, Hans Ulrich Obrist and Nicolas Bourriaud. Although there was less information on these two curators because of their highly contemporary nature, I focused on interviews and news articles written about their work in lieu of academic articles. These pieces of research gave a primary source point of view to the exhibitions which I found valuable in constructing a semblance of how the experience would have been for a viewer at the exhibition, therefore translating to me the effect of the curator in making the exhibition more of an experiential work of art then a simple exhibition of art. To end, I researched two exhibitions that have long been considered the first exhibitions-as-artworks in the timeline of art history. Lucy Lippard, a self professed non-curator with no background training on the subject, curated 557,087 in 1969, providing more of an experience then a viewing of art through the innovative use of her exhibition catalogue and the way in which she used her unique methods of display to showcase other artists and their works of art in her shows. Earthworks, although the last exhibition I researched, was arguably one of the first recognizable exhibitions-as-artworks to appear on the artistic scene. This exhibition involved the use of the earth in the creation of the works, leading to unconventional mediums as well as methods of display. Slide 5: In terms of research organization, my primary method was the OWL site, with Professor Hatch providing me the tools to post and organize my research for him to review and provide feedback. I learned here the importance of organization with regards to keeping track of the different exhibitions I was researching. With each posted article, chapter and piece of research, I was annotating and highlighting pieces for Professor Hatch to read and focus on, which would help with the overall design of the course. Slide 6: Here is an example of the view inside one of the folders, in this case, my research into the Secession Beethoven Exhibition. There is an extra folder for other articles I found, with the main articles of my research posted below. As each article was annotated by me, I highlighted the pieces of research that I thought were particularly enthralling to the case of exhibitions-as-artworks with a little asterisk so Professor Hatch would know to take special care with those articles. Slide 7: Overall, the skills I am taking away from this experience as a USRI Intern are organization, as learned through the use of the OWL site and in my communications with Professor Hatch, research strategies as learned through my attendance at the Professional Development sessions, communication through my academic discussions with Professor Hatch on the organization of the research as well as course reading structure and lastly, how to review academic articles as that was my main activity every day of the internship. I very much appreciated the opportunity to work under Professor Hatch for all of the different points of view it gained me as an undergraduate student and for the knowledge gained in the subject areas of my research in the USRI internship. Thank you. |
