The Human Touch: Making Art, Leaving Traces
- Submitting institution
-
University of Cambridge
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 12168
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- -
- Year of first exhibition
- 2021
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- Yes
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- Because of delays to the opening of The Human Touch, we were able to bring in artists as contributors to the exhibition and accompanying catalogue. Both therefore include more diverse voices than originally planned, as highlighted in the 300-word exhibition statement. The loan from a private collection of a work by Frank Auerbach was no longer possible, so we substituted it for the Fitzwilliam painting of Primrose Hill, making a similar point. Because of the new, urgent importance of the exhibition’s subject, we alluded to the pandemic in the catalogue and didactic materials.
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The Human Touch: Making Art Leaving Traces exhibition is lead output in this multi-component item, which includes the catalogue alongside contextual information enabling the reviewer to visualise the exhibition. The exhibition aimed to break new ground in a survey of the role and function of touch in human experience and mark-making. Co-curators Ling and Reynolds designed the exhibition to be global and transhistorical. Ling authored one chapter, focusing on the social side of touch, and co-wrote two others.
Works historically categorised as ‘fine art’ were examined alongside objects from other Cambridge Museums, traditionally considered within purely historical (numismatic), theological or anthropological disciplines. The approach was object-led, the argument formed through demonstrative examples of the traces of touch, with the juxtaposition of diverse objects and media to encourage new ways of looking. Artists within the art-historical canon were scrutinized alongside objects by or that spoke to more marginalised voices, conventionally sidelined by historical accounts. Another innovation was to include work of contemporary artists who explore both the complexity of the hand and the sensitivity of skin in telling its painful personal and political histories.
The exhibition explored the multi-faceted, all-embracing nature of touch. The essays explore anatomy and skin; the relationship between the brain, hand, and creativity; the symbolism of touch, desire and possession; and ideological touch in terms of reverence and iconoclasm.
The exhibition and book responded to the pandemic by acknowledging the challenge of physical distancing and the absence of touch; to the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest and symbolic conquest of problematic statuary; and to the social #MeToo movement, against unwanted sexualised touch. The volume included collaborations with three carefully identified writers and artists.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -