Artists' Sanctuaries: Engaging with House Museums

We welcome reflections on personal encounters as well as scholarly analyses of single artist house museums, which have proliferated in recent years within the landscape of museology. Both conversions of the artist’s own space and new, purpose-built structures at a site that may have been meaningful for that artist attract many different audiences, from the general public to scholars studying the artist’s archived works and documents. This session seeks to explore the complex interface between the potential intimacy of their settings, the impact of their architectural and design forms, and the social and cultural roles these institutions perform.

Among many other questions, we are interested in how these projects balance tensions among aims that might include preservation (of the building and its interior, as well as works of art), pilgrimage, place-making, tourism, scholarship, and cultural education regarding artworks, the artist’s life course, and context. What disposes a design installation to manifest the interiority of the artist, in contrast to one that more centrally contextualizes the artist and the site historically? Have recent re-thinkings of an artist’s works or career enabled new installation strategies? How in general have museological approaches to such sites changed over time? How are the potentially conflicting goals of maintaining the integrity of the historical, architectural character of a structure versus creating contemporary exhibition spaces resolved?

Contributions addressing these and related questions, including international and cross-cultural perspectives, by art and architectural historians, artists, architects, visual culture critics, and those working in other relevant fields are welcome.