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Recent scholarship in the field of global modernism has argued for the inclusion of previously ignored or under-represented regions, artists, and practices. Such efforts to expand the art historical canon have focused on cultural production once deemed “peripheral” or “marginal,” resulting in new theoretical and methodological models for approaching art history. Despite these developments in the field, individual practitioners continue to have their own personal “blind spots.” How do we — as art historians, artists, designers, and museum practitioners — perpetuate these “blind spots”? How might we identify and address them in our scholarship? In what ways can we acknowledge, account for, and adequately respond to them in museological displays? What new models exist?

This session draws together artists, activists, designers, scholars, educators, and museum professionals, to debate current research and case studies that shed light on these issues. Speakers and participants are encouraged to share reflections on their own blind spots in their scholarship, artistic practice, or museum work and demonstrate how they confronted their oversights. Speakers may also discuss recent exhibitions, artworks or scholarship that demonstrate the exclusion or erasure of marginalized identities and perspectives as well as instances that have sensitively addressed indigenous oppressions, colonial and post-colonial power structures, complex racial histories, and geographic omissions.