Germany | curatorial project and residency call

A call for proposals for a cooperation project of ifa Gallery Stuttgart and Akademie Schloss Solitude: a curatorial residency and exhibition project dealing with arts and crafts, addressing issues of European art history and non-European perspectives. The project should be undertaken as a form of dialogue, with co-curators presenting diverse areas.

Deadline for submissions: July 10th, 2015

We are pleased to announce the call for applications for a cooperation project of ifa Gallery Stuttgart and Akademie Schloss Solitude, which includes a residency in Akademie Schloss Solitude, conception and realisation of an exhibition in ifa Galleries Stuttgart and Berlin, and a publication dealing with the question of art and crafts.

European art history sees art and crafts as two different matters, in the canon, in training and teaching, and in research. Works of art and crafts are usually collected, bought and sold, and exhibited in independent and separate museums. Attempts have been made to break with this division of two worlds, by the Arts and Crafts movement in England in the nineteenth century, and by the bauhaus. But in other parts of the world and cultures this European definition and distinction has been more or less imposed, at least in institutional terms in the academies and museums.

The dualism and antagonism of art and crafts has become obsolete today, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The practice of categorizing works as either art or crafts is no longer undertaken from a Eurocentric perspective. In different cultures this kind of definition and allocation either was never or is today not done, or completely different criteria are used in processes of categorization.

A cooperation project between the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa) and Akademie Schloss Solitude will focus on specific cases with the aim of investigating and presenting the following:

– how is the relationship between art and crafts seen from non-European perspectives?

– have other cultures seen and do they still see a distinction between art and crafts?

– how and by whom is the art market, which is traditionally dominated by European art history and a Western norm, altered, transformed, or avoided?

The project includes research, planning, an exhibition, and a publication:

– Akademie Schloss Solitude offers a five-month bursary in (December 2015 until February 2016 and September/October 2016), which could be shared by three curators / co-curators if appropriate.

– ifa Gallery Stuttgart offers to plan and realize the exhibition and the accompanying publication within the scope of the available project budget. The exhibition will take place in October 2016 at ifa Gallery Stuttgart, and in spring 2017 at ifa Gallery Berlin

Further information on Akademie Schloss Solitude

Further information on ifa.de