The Imaginary Museum: monuments and landmarks

An exhibition of images from 18 artists, curated by practice-led PhD student Louise Atkinson, in partnership with the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage at the University of Leeds.

The Imaginary Museum has been produced in response to the tradition of artists and theorists interrogating the museum archive format to investigate and expose the politics of collection and display. The project aims to understand and communicate the ways that art history is made, and how artists engage with the collection and categorisation of art.

Projects such as The Fourth Plinth Programme in Trafalgar Square invites artists to respond to the idea of the monument through large scale sculptural and installation methods. The Imaginary Museum: monuments and landmarks takes this prospect one step further through turning the object back into a postcard image to be collected and distributed in the manner of tourist sights.

The ‘museum’ is a series of 18 postcard reproductions selected from an open call, displayed on a postcard rack at the 2 July edition of Heritage Show + Tell. The audience are invited to select from the postcards, in part or in whole, by leaving a suggested donation in a nearby honesty box. There are also small branded envelopes for audiences to keep their selection in, thereby creating their own imaginary museum. Each of the images and texts provided by the artists will be collected in the form of an artist’s book which will include an essay about the exhibition. Images and texts will be featured on the project website.

Following Heritage Show + Tell, the exhibition then moves on to the foyer of the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies (Old Mining Building) for the summer.

Contact the Centre for Critical Studies in Museums, Galleries and Heritage for more information: ccsmghinfo@leeds.ac.uk

The Imaginary Museum: monuments and landmarks is produced with generous support from the Centre for Practice-led Research in the Arts, University of Leeds

Feature image: Aylwin Greenwood-Lambert, 'Genuine Artefacts', 2012