Global Art Histories as Method
Image caption: A view of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts exhibition, Arts of One World. Photo: Courtesy of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
In collaboration with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Global Art Histories Pedagogy (GAHP) project examines how conceptualizing digital content for museum apps intended for the public helps researchers to address implicit biases and systemic issues early in the research design of art-historical projects. As a point of departure, participants select and respond to an object related to their research topic from the museum’s innovative intercultural and transhistorical exhibition Arts of One World. The proposed global art histories as a method prioritizes decolonizing research, the process of self-reflexive positionality, and inclusion of diverse worldviews and ways of being.
team members
Alice Ming Wai Jim
Alice Ming Wai Jim is Professor and Concordia University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories. She is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (Brill Publishers, with Concordia U. and NYU). An art historian and curator, her research on diasporic art in Canada and contemporary Asian art has generated new dialogues within and between ethnocultural and global art histories, critical race theory, media arts, and curatorial studies. Jim is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Co-Investigator and a Fonds de Recherche du Québec Principal Investigator for the Trans-Atlantic Platform project, “Worlding Public Cultures”. Her SSHRC-funded research project examines Afrofuturism and Black Lives Matter in the Canadian art scene.
Role: Collaborator
Cluster: Critical Race and Museology
Laura Vigo
Laura Vigo is Curator of Asian Art and Archeology at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Vigo has a BA in Chinese Language and Art History from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, an MA in Asian Art and Archaeology, and a PhD in Chinese Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (UK). She is currently an invited Professor in Critical Art History at Université de Montréal. Her current research interests include the history of collecting “the Other”, specifically the reception and western-centric conceptualisation of Asian Art outside of Asia.
Role: Collaborator
Cluster: Critical Race and Museology
Varda Nisar
Varda Nisar was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan and is currently a PhD Candidate attempting to understand the complicated nature of museums in Pakistan against the background of dictatorships. As an art educator, Varda was involved in establishing the Karachi Children’s Art Festival in 2014 and headed the Educational Program for the Karachi Biennale’s inaugural edition in 2017. In 2020 she moderated a speaker series titled “(Art+Micro)history: Contemporary Artistic voices from the South,” which aimed to highlight how artists living and working in Karachi explore issues of urbanization and development, while simultaneously navigating the implications of creating work in politically charged environments.
Role: Research Assistant
Cluster: Critical Race and Museology