Is it time to depoliticise art?

“The author Howard Jacobson once wrote that if an artist’s work is political, it only works as art if it transcends politics. Today, curatorial choices seem to have been driven by political perspective rather than artistic merit. Or, as art critic Matthew Collings wrote of the Tate Modern, its overriding message now appears to be ‘Meaning must always entail moralising’.

Worse still – argues our speaker Wendy Earle – “the modern politics of art is trite, the idea of collective art-making and performance art largely uninteresting, and the general slightness and messiness of many of the works irritating and the overall lack of nuance, subtlety and, yes, beauty is wearisome and tedious.”

Date, Time and Venue: 11 May 2017, 7 PM in the Parlour of the Brunswick Inn, Derby. £3 (£2 unwaged).

Speaker: Dr Wendy Earle

Wendy writes on the arts and culture for spiked and is convenor of the Institute of Ideas Arts and Society Forum, which promotes open and open-ended discussion of the arts and culture and of the place of arts and culture in society. She works at Birkbeck, University of London, to promote knowledge exchange and public engagement with research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Previously she worked in educational publishing and at the British Film Institute.

A selection of Wendy’s articles is available in the Spiked Author Archive

Chair: Dr Vanessa Pupavac (University of Nottingham)

The dual crisis of migration

“…the fate of migrants is becoming securitised and weaponised. When the European Parliament voted to interrupt Turkey’s EU membership ascension process and plans for visa-free travel, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened the EU that he would not stop migrants travelling to Europe ‘Listen to me: these border gates will be opened if you go any further’ (BBC, 25 November 2016).” Continue reading

Do museums have a future?

Whoever wins the next election, museums and galleries will continue to be under threat.  Is this simply explained by the political economics of austerity and the need for local councils to make financial savings? Or is there a profounder cultural reason that makes such cuts easy targets even against local opposition? Have people simply forgotten what museums are for? Museums, like universities celebrate and defend themselves because of their personal, social and economic ‘impact’.  How convincing are such instrumental arguments? Can we make a better case for museums? Continue reading

The politics of sport

In April 2014, the East Midlands Salon hosted a discussion entitled ‘The politics of sport’.

Geoff KidderThis Salon discussion was introduced by Geoff Kidder – the Membership and Events Director at the Institute of Ideas and their resident expert on all matters sporting and will ask ‘Should we kick politics out of sport?

By way of introduction Geoff says: Continue reading