Traditional sites of artistic production, consumption, and display are continuing to be contested by waves of digital media, culture, and commerce. These forms of contestation are causing re-arrangements, giving rise to new art forms, media, and venues: from digital spaces, to galleries, to the street. While there may be an ever-present monocultural form of globalization that flows through these digital nodes and their algorithmic logics, there is also an opportunity to project "localisms" on a scale never before seen. These localisms are a countervailing opportunity from the "edges of the world" to project voices into the center. In the current political and ecological context, diverse perspectives will be critical to address the crisis facing our planetary existence. With our Special Focus in 2021, we want to consider how cultural institutions, such as museums and galleries, play a role in the larger projects of community formation, nation-building, and global politics, and how artistic production interprets these cultural flows and responds to these new institutionalized spaces.
Chief Cultural Officer and Director, Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Honorary Research Fellow, School of Design, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Lecturer, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
The Sixteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society featured plenary sessions by some of the world’s leading thinkers and innovators in the field.
Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia
Indigenous Art and the Australian Nation State
Kimberley Foundation Ian Potter Chair in Rock Art, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Chief Executive Officer, Western Australian Museum, Australia; Chair, Council of the Western Australian Biodiversity Sciences Institute; Chair, Finance and Resources Committee, International Council of Museums (ICOM)
Shaping the World – Understanding the Future
Docente e investigadora, Universidad San Jorge, Zaragoza, España
For each conference, a small number of Emerging Scholar Awards are given to outstanding graduate students and emerging scholars who have an active research interest in the conference themes. Emerging Scholars perform a critical role in the conference by chairing the parallel sessions, providing technical assistance in the sessions, and presenting their own research papers. The 2021 Emerging Scholar Award Recipients are as follows:
University of Oregon, United States
Texas Woman's University, United States
University of Western Australia, Australia
University of Brasilia and Federal University of Roraima, Brazil
RMIT University, Australia
Cranbrook Academy of Art, United States
Concordia University
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
University of the South Pacific, Fiji
Makerere University, Uganda, and University of Auckland, New Zealand
University of Manchester, United Kingdom
Charles Darwin University, Australia
Universidad Santiago de Compostela (USC), Spain
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Perth, Australia
