White Fabulation: a prehistory of the 'culture war'

Join us for another exciting The Art of Curation Lecture Series with Prof. Dan Hicks visiting from The University of Oxford and Pitt Rivers Museum in the U.K.!

This talk introduces some of the themes of Dan's forthcoming book, Every Monument Will Fall: a prehistory of the culture war (Penguin 2025). It begins with a simple historical question. How might we best describe the phenomenon through which art and culture was weaponised from the 1880s to the 1920s: from White supremacist statues in the streets to stolen objects in museums, and from the preservation of heritage to the founding of university departments of anthropology and archaeology. Joining the dots from the de-named Kroeber Hall at Berkeley to the unfallen figure of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford, the talk sets current ideas over a so-called 'culture war' in longer-term perspective. In doing so it presents a prehistory of a war on culture that began with what we might call 'White Fabulation' and continued into the 21st century, even in the seminar rooms and theory reading groups — far closer in fact than you might imagine.

Hosted by: Graduate Program in Curatorial and Museum Studies, The University of Adelaide

Date: Monday 28 October 2024

Location: The Braggs Lecture Theatre, University of Adelaide Campus

Time: 5:30 pm, for 6:00 pm start

Cost: Free (Registration required)

Please note: A separate ticket is required for Reclaiming Heritage: The Repatriation of Stolen Cultural Objects in Post-colonial Era symposium

Facilitator: Dr Ania Kotarba, The University of Adelaide

For further information regarding the event, please contact Dr Ania Kotarba at museumstudies@adelaide.edu.au

Speakers Bio

Dan Hicks is Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford, Curator of World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum and a Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford. Dan has written widely on art, culture, architecture, heritage, museums, colonialism, and the visual and material culture of the recent past and the near-present. His last book The Brutish Museums was named one of the New York Times Art Books of 2020 and the National Council on Public History's Best Book on Public History for 2021. The follow-up, Every Monument Will Fall, will be published in May 2025 by Penguin (Hutchinson Heinemann). Twitter/Insta/BlueSky: @ProfDanHicks