Museums and Photography

Elena Stylianou is Assistant Professor in Art History and Theory at European University Cyprus and the founder and coordinator of its Cultural Studies and Contemporary Arts Lab. She has taught in well-known museums in New York, such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Museum of the City of New York and has been involved in various curatorial projects. She has received several fellowships and awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship (USA) and an Art Table Museum Fellowship (USA). Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert is Assistant Professor at the School of Fine and Applied Arts at the Cyprus University of Technology and the founder and coordinator of its Visual Sociology and Museum Studies Lab. Her previous books include The Political Museum (2016), Museums and Visitor Photography (2016) and Photography and Cyprus (2014). She has received several scholarships and awards, including a Smithsonian Fellowship in Museum Practice (USA) and a Fulbright Fellowship (USA).

Approaches to Displaying Death in Museums: An Introduction
Elena Stylianou & Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert

PART I: EVIDENCING THE PAST
Negotiating Death at the Great Kanto Earthquake Memorial Museum
J. M. Hammond

Honoring the dead: photography and the display of the Jewish Necropolis at the Jewish
Museum of Thessaloniki
Iro Katsaridou

“Death from the skies.” Photographs in museums of the aerial bombing of civilians during World War Two
Sheila Watson

Saints, Martyrs and Heroes: “Sacred Displays” or the Iconography of Death in Cypriot Museums
Yiannis Toumazis

PART II: THE SPECTABLE OF DEATH
The War/Photography Exhibition and the Display of Death
Jean Kempf

“Persons Unknown”: Lynching Photographs in the Museum
RM Wolff

Human Skulls and Photographs of Dead Bandits: the Problems of Presenting a Nineteenth Century Museum to Twenty-First-Century-Audiences
Silvano Montaldo and Eleanor Chiari

Our First Murder: Exhibiting Evidence outside the Police Archive
Stella Pekiaridi

PART III: EMPAPHY AND RESTORING ANONYMITY
A Gallery of Martyrs – The Martyr in the Gallery: Public Display and the Artistic Appropriation of Martyr Images in the Middle East
Verena Straub

What Will You Remember When I’m Gone? Funerary Photography in the Gallery’s Public / Private Space
Rosanne Altstatt

Remediating Death at Yad Vashem’s Holocaust History Museum
Rachel Perry

Photography and the Museum: visiting the sight of Death
Pam Meecham

PART IV: MUSEUMS AS AGENTS OF CHANGE
Double Exposure: Absence and Evidence in Ken Gonzales-Day’s Erased Lynching
Reilley Bishop-Stall

On May 1, 2011 (Alfredo Jaar, 2011) – Expanding the Frame of the Original Photograph
Mafalda Dâmaso

Photography as a form of taxidermy: Zoe Leonard’s Preserved Head of a Bearded Woman, Musée Orfila
Chelsea Nichols