2019 Events
Berman Board: Documents Read Aloud, organized by Neil Doshi
This free event is part of the public programing related to our current exhibition Berman Board, a group project with Fiona Connor, Neil Doshi, Michala Paludan, and Gala Porras-Kim. For this event, a voice actor will orate the various documents used to catalogue the Berman Board collection. These documents function as metadata of the objects, in that they provide further information and context by describing and identifying such elements as purchase history, media type, formal qualities, etc.
About this Project
The Berman Board formed in 2017 as a collaborative think-tank to consider the future of eleven objects, gifted to Connor, that originated from regions and cultures across Africa, Asia, Oceania, and North America. Connor formed the board by inviting Doshi, Paludan, and Porras-Kim—whose practices test institutional customs of collection and display—to explore the meanings conferred upon cultural objects through architecture, images, and signs. The project contemplates what it means to trace the hidden travels and worlds of objects and artifacts, considers the ways in which they hold histories of colonial violence, and through this exhaustive process figures out what a conscientious and fair form of caretaking could be. How can we shift the ways in which we understand institutional collections and the language surrounding them, as well as the narratives associated with objects by means of exhibition context and design?