Editors Note: This is an archived blog post from 11/2/2010.

Workshop: Visualising and Exhibiting Fascism

Friday 19 March

Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

The workshop will bring together academics and practitioners to explore some ideas, approaches and problems relating to the production and subsequent display of cultural artefacts associated with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.

PROGRAMME

13:00-13:15 Registration (entrance foyer)

13:15- Welcome (lecture theatre)

13:30-15:30 Session 1 – Exhibiting Fascism

Gregory Maertz (St. John’s College, New York) will present his remarkable discovery of an unknown collection of Nazi war art — by a group of artists embedded in the German army, commissioned directly by Hitler — and explore the surprisingly modernist character of the images. He will then speak about the political issues he has encountered in trying to stage an exhibition of these works in the United States.

Hans Ottomeyer (Director, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin) and Rachel Knight (Head of Exhibitions, Imperial War Museum North, Manchester) will then present short papers addressing some of the issues relating to the exhibition of politically sensitive works.

15:30-16:00 Coffee Break (South Gallery)

16:00-18:00 Session 2 – Fascism and Its Images: Roger Griffin and Jeffrey Schnapp in Conversation

Leading cultural historians of fascism, Roger Griffin (Oxford Brookes) and Jeffrey Schnapp (Stanford) will address a set of six questions, which concern the way we can interpret the cultural language of fascism, how our assessment of it has changed in the light of recent academic trends, and what implications this research has for the broader public encounter with fascism and its images.

For further information, please contact Maiken.umbach@manchester.ac.uk or Francesca.billiani@manchester.ac.uk