Feminism has played an instrumental role in questioning, exposing, and rupturing the sexual and gendered politics underpinning museum exhibitions and collections. Since the 1960s, feminist artists and art historians have led groundbreaking efforts to subvert the art industry’s heteropatriarchy through artistic and critical interventions. Due to their subversive character and reticence to canonisation, feminist artistic and curatorial practices have long challenged established forms of historicisation and classification.

While conferences and journal issues have recently examined feminist approaches to contemporary art curating, there has been relatively little focus on cultivating feminist art collections. Over the course of a day-long symposium, we will bring together a group of scholars, art professionals, and PhD researchers to explore what remains a largely under-theorised subject: feminist contemporary art collecting practices. Our emphasis will be on intersectional feminist perspectives on gender in collections, including decolonial approaches, co-commissioning, and links with curatorial and artistic interventions. This event will provide doctoral researchers with the opportunity to expand their professional networks, bridging their academic research with on-the-ground curatorial issues. Through case study presentations, roundtable conversations, and discussion sessions, we will address urgent issues related to feminist modes of collecting: Are feminist art collecting practices possible? What kinds of material and ideological infrastructures are necessary for feminist collections to exist? How do we tackle the biases and epistemological violence inherent in existing collections and collecting frameworks? How can we build future art collections (and institutions) differently?

Confirmed contributors include: Simone Alexander (artist), Dr James Bell (University of Edinburgh), Dr Anjalie Dalal-Clayton (Decolonising Arts Institute, University of the Arts London), Dr Angela Dimitrakaki (University of Edinburgh), Annie Fletcher (Irish Museum of Modern Art), Shoair Mavlian (The Photographers’ Gallery), Dr Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani (University of Edinburgh), Dr Alexandra Ross (University of Glasgow), Dr Stephanie Straine (National Galleries of Scotland), Dr Jillian Sutherland (University of St Andrews).

A film screening and conversation with Sweatmother and Chizu Anucha will take place the evening before the symposium on Wednesday, May 17th.

The symposium is organised by researchers from the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, St Andrews, and Strathclyde: Camila Cavalcante Pereira, Lexington Davis, Fabiola Fiocco, Lucy Howie, Dr Kirsten Lloyd, Dr Catherine Spencer, and Francesca Vale.

The screening and symposium have been generously supported by the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, the St Andrews Centre for Contemporary Art, the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews, the Global Contemporary Research Group at Edinburgh College of Art, and the University of Edinburgh.