Open Seminar with Mårten Snickare: “Learning from the Kunstkammer? Colonial Objects and Decolonial Options”
WONA (Worlding Northern Art) invites to an open seminar with the Swedish art historian Mårten Snickare: “Learning from the Kunstkammer? Colonial Objects and Decolonial Options”.
Mårten Snickare is professor in Art History at Stockholm university and director of Accelerator, en exhibition space connected to the university, where contemporary art and research meet.
Prior to becoming a university professor, Snicker worked as a curator of old master drawings at the National Museum in Stockholm, an experience that led to a lasting interest in museums, exhibitions, objects and materiality. The baroque has always been at the centre of his research and teaching, understood as a historical epoch but also as an undercurrent throughout art history. In 2014, Snickare took part in the exhibition Barockt at Kulturhuset, Stockholm, conceived as a dialogue between 17th-century art from Nationalmuseum and contemporary Swedish and international art. He currently works on Swedish colonial history as it has been visualized and materialized in art, collecting and museums.
He recently published Colonial Objects in Early Modern Sweden and Beyond. From the Kunstkammer to the Current Museum Crisis (Amsterdam University Press, 2022), which is available Open Access: https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/54251
The seminar takes its starting point in the last chapter of the book (chapter 8), which deals with colonial objects and museums in the present and future. We advise to have read the book’s introduction prior to the seminar. It is possible to participate in the seminar without having read the recommended chapter. The seminar will be in Swedish.