Under-represented historical lives: exploring the impact of contemporary art on heritage and collections policy and practice

Museums and heritage sites have been reviewing the representation of historical and contemporary lives in their collections and places for a number of years, and since the major upsurge in profile of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, the diversity and gaps in representation have come under particularly close scrutiny. Since Fred Wilson's 'Mining the Museum' (1992) at the Maryland Historical Society where the recontextualization of the collection highlighted the Society's connection to African-American lives rather than presented the typical American white-male view, the practice of inviting contemporary artists to respond to difficult or untold histories in museums and heritage sites has become increasingly prevalent. It is typically used as a tool to challenge and diversify accepted historical narratives across a range of under-represented and marginalised communities. Despite this upsurge in practice, there remains little critical analysis of the impact of these interventions, or evidence as to whether they have influenced changes in institutional policy and interpretative practice. It is this gap in current knowledge that this research seeks to address by asking: 'How and to what effect has contemporary art been used in response to missing or under-represented historical lives and experience in developing policy and interpretive practice?'. The research will explore the origin of this praxis, and its impact and usage, including how it is measured, to understand its significance for institutions.

As the National Trust's 2020 report into its properties' connections to colonialism and historic slavery noted, there has been a recent shift in attention from the material culture of historic properties to their events and personal histories, in other words their biography. This research responds by drawing together the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) and National Trust (NT) in their focus on people, human histories, and narratives. Across these institutions these stories are told through curatorial approaches to collections and locations. Adopting a case-study approach, this part-time, collaborative PhD will undertake empirical analysis into contemporary art responses (considering visual arts, writing, performance, dance, music, socially-engaged practice, sound and architecture) to these collections. Although much recent attention has been on slavery, there are several other under-represented communities and a survey undertaken in the first 3-6 months of the PhD will be used to tighten the focus in relation to a specific community (e.g., broader colonial history, gender, sexual identity, class). Focusing on a particular under-represented community but range of responses will allow analysis of differing interpretative approaches to be undertaken. This will accompany archival and desk-based research and interviews with those working within institutions (including artists, curators and interpretation teams) to assess impact and any institutional change. These findings will be placed within a wider context of other REACH consortium members and select international examples.

At a time when the collections and narratives at museums and heritage sites are being purposefully reevaluated and represented, this timely study will be the first to explore the role of contemporary art in response to under-represented historical lives and its impact on institutions in diversifying practice by opening up a wider range of stories and perspectives through their collections, displays and interpretation. In so doing, it speaks to all four REACH research themes, in particular Identities in Imperial and Global Contexts and Identities, ideologies and heritage narratives, and also the cross-cutting theme of diversity.