- Contemporary Art, Material Culture, Museum Collection history, Roger Brown, Chicago, Pataphysics, Puppet Theatre, and 39 moreMuseum Education, Puppetry as an Art Form, Traditional Music, Collections Management, Material Culture Studies, Museum Studies, Popular Culture, Architecture, Fine Art Photography, Performance Studies, Performance Art, Burial Customs, Culture, Ritual, Tradition, Archaeology, Puppetry, Absurdism, La Pataphysique, Alfred Jarry, Art History, Museums and Exhibition Design, Curatorial Studies and Practice, Fine Arts, History, Censorship, Narrative, Critical Psychology, Discourse, Politics, Censorship (History), Sexual Identity, Visual Arts, Homosexuality, Queer, Gay, Lesbian, Script, and Alfred Jarry Patafísicaedit
- Nicholas Lowe is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, project manager, and curator. He is known for his photography, video and installation works from the 1980’s and 90’s that focus on experiences of AIDS and HIV. Lowe has also worked i... moreNicholas Lowe is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, project manager, and curator. He is known for his photography, video and installation works from the 1980’s and 90’s that focus on experiences of AIDS and HIV. Lowe has also worked in prisons and with farming communities in the UK. Lowe has worked with people in these specific social situations to facilitate opportunities where the details and information from personal archives and from first voice accounts are offered as a commentary upon prevailing social conditions. Sometimes called a social practitioner, and identified as a contextual artist Lowe has facilitated exhibitions, publications and archival collecting throughout the 90’s into the early 2000’s and up to the present time. His current employment as Associate Professor in Arts Administration positions him also as curator of the Roger Brown, La Conchita, CA collection, a portion of the estate collection at the Roger Brown Study Collection, a special collection of the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. His current creative endeavors are responses to landscape, drawings and digital photographs, made both in the studio and plein air, that pay careful attention to the conditions of a place and to the subtle indicators of human activity. Other recent visual work takes the form of three dimensional miniatures and diorama's that address content derived from archival and literary sources while taking on curatorial and museological concerns. Written accounts, drawings, etchings and archival photographs are activated as sources for the dioramas which represent places that are now no longer in existence, and actions, incidents and situations that have long since been passed into narrative. Strongly calling to mind considerations expressed by Michel Foucault where "fictions function as fact", the nature of truth in the museum is examined and its mechanisms are openly presented. Lowe joined the faculty at SAIC in 2003 in the Department of Arts Administration and Policy where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in studio, archival management, and material culture. He was born in England where he received the Higher Diploma in Fine Art from the Slade School of Art in 1989. He has lived and worked as an academic and visual artist in Berlin, Bethune, Bristol, Buxton, Culver City, Lille, London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Luxembourg, Paris and Santa Barbara.edit
In 1849 little known artist James Wilkins traveled the Overland Trail from St. Louis, Missouri to Hang Town (now Placerville), California to collect and record landscape details as studies from which he produced a scroll panorama,... more
In 1849 little known artist James Wilkins traveled the Overland Trail from St. Louis, Missouri to Hang Town (now Placerville), California to collect and record landscape details as studies from which he produced a scroll panorama, The Grand Moving Mirror of the Overland Trail. The panorama is nonextant but a journal and 50 watercolor drawings survive alongside 13 paintings and an assortment of archival ephemera. Inspired by Wilkins’s journey, I chose to retrace his route in the fall of 2017. I recorded the experience in watercolor, photography and video as a method for understanding the panorama’s contemporary resonances as an historical document This. essay reflects on the residues of Wilkins’s journey alongside contemporary observations from the same landscapes.
Research Interests:
This paper opens an investigation into the relationships between the panorama narratives of colonial America and the subsequent development of American landscape narratives and tourism. In guide books, maps, and settler diaries of the... more
This paper opens an investigation into the relationships between the panorama narratives of colonial America and the subsequent development of American landscape narratives and tourism. In guide books, maps, and settler diaries of the 1840’s and 1850’s, a long list of landscape features are described alongside narratives of encounters with plains “Indians.” A number of locations appear to receive greater attention than others, and two sites in particular along the Platte River stand out: a group of Pawnee earth lodges and a Sioux funeral site. These locations are featured prominently in James Wilkins’ 1849 drawings and travel journal, and evidence suggests that they appear to have been included in his panorama narrative too. The Immense Moving Mirror of the Land Route To California has perished but in Wilkins diary his accounts are vivid. Amongst other sources the same locations are prominent too: both places are noted on maps from before and after that time and are reflected also in many journal accounts. The representation of pre-colonial life on the plains appears to have been anticipated by audiences as part of panorama presentations, building towards narratives of manifest destiny. The mythology and experience of westward travel and the overland panoramas have played their part in securing an American sense of landscape and heritage.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The aim of this paper is to revisit questions of censorship in the arts in the UK under the introduction of Clause 28, also known as Section 28. Section 28 of the local government act was passed into law in the United Kingdom on 24 May... more
The aim of this paper is to revisit questions of censorship in the arts in the UK under the introduction of Clause 28, also known as Section 28. Section 28 of the local government act was passed into law in the United Kingdom on 24 May 1988 and then subsequently repealed on 18 November 2003. The section states that:28.—(1) The following shall be inserted after section 2 of the [1986c. 10] Local Government Act 1986 (prohibition of political publicity)—2A.—(1) A local authority shall not—intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality;promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.