Any Minute Now
A ‘lecture list’ of colloquia and conferences at which I am speaking or participating, presenting research in a range of fields of knowledge in which I have expertise.
Author Archive for: Martha
Entries by Martha
Museum Godeffroy, Hamburg: The South Sea in the North Sea
For most of the academic year 2019-2020 I have been effecting research on the Museum Godeffroy as a Petra Kappert Visiting Research Fellow with the University of Hamburg’s Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures.
Exhibition Histories in Science and Technology
Exhibition histories as a form began to appear in several disciplines at once in quick succession at the end of the 1990s.
Politics of Natural History
Natural historical materials, beyond the more obvious case of physical anthropology, have remained until quite recently largely outside of the important discussion and debate around heritage — both tangible and intangible — in relation to human rights and cultural goods across an asymmetric globe. The deep schism in museological practice and function between museums of material culture — […]
Research Fellow, University of Göttingen (2018)
Deepening and renewing the connections between university research and collections, the University of Göttingen has created a ‘Zentrale Kustodie’ as a development centre for its extraordinarily rich collections, amassed over 250 years. It has a dedicated and highly trained staff under the leadership of Dr Marie Luisa Allemeyer, and work has already begun on the Forum Wissen — a […]
Deputy Director: V&A Research Institute
VARI — the Victoria and Albert Museum Research Institute is a new programme of research and teaching partnerships to enhance access to the V&A’s collections and develop new approaches to research, training, display and interpretation. I have been appointed Deputy Director of VARI in its initial development phase over the next year: VARI was was launched in […]
Senior Research Associate, Assembling Alternative Futures for Heritage
Senior Research Associate, Assembling Alternative Futures for Heritage (2015-2016) AAFH — or ‘Heritage Futures’ — is a flagship four-year research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council in the ‘Care for the Future’ strategic programme. Four interconnected themes, each led by a separate researcher, will ‘explore the potential for innovation and creative exchange […]
‘Beyond Reception’: Nordic Culture Ministers Meeting, Stockholm
Nordic Culture Forum 2014: Parliament House, Stockholm (30 October 2014) Representing the Ice Hot Nordic Dance Platform, I was invited to speak about innovative evaluation practices at the Stockholm meeting of the Nordic Culture Ministers. My talk made three key points: 1) We must go beyond the study of audience reception alone in order to understand the […]
Collections-Based Research: University of Reading
Collections-Based Research Programme Director, University of Reading (first cohort 2013-2014) An increasing number of researchers from the humanities and beyond understandably want to work directly with material culture: this new programme is focused on skills training to enable these colleagues to collaborate effectively with museum and archive professionals. As Programme Director, I have been working […]
Museums as Social Learning Spaces: Denmark
‘Inclusion and Interdisciplinarity’ at Social Learning Space & Knowledge Producing Processes: the Danish Museums & Galleries User Survey (May 2013) As part of a group of four international experts, I participated in a week-long tour of Danish Museums which culminated in a two-day conference at the contemporary art museum Arken (13-15 May 2013). Organised by […]
Artists Work in the (Science) Museum
‘Science Lesson,’ Artists work in the museum: histories, interventions and subjectivity, Victoria and Albert Museum (October 2012) “Artists, curators, historians and museum professionals explore the history of artists as museum professionals, museum and archive as the content of artistic production, the hidden subjectivity of the many artists working in museums and galleries alongside their practice […]
Looking and Healing: Artists and their Doctors
Looking and Healing: Artists and their Doctors, Lecture Seminar, Centre for Humanities and Health, King’s College London (May 2012) Artists and doctors share highly developed observational skills and a fundamental love for humankind. This lecture explores some historically revealing relationships between these different practitioners, and the intellectual, social and professional complexes in which these […]
Navigating Interdisciplinarity
Navigating Interdisciplinarity, Wellcome Trust 75 Event, University of Dundee Life Sciences and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art (2011) The extraordinary potential of interdisciplinary practice often meets bureaucratic obstacles. Enumerating them — and working strategically to eliminate them — is part of the essential groundwork to be done in order to build productive, practical […]
Senior Research Associate: Reconstructing Sloane
Research and Project Management, Reconstructing Sloane (2011 – present) The vast Enlightenment-era collections amassed by Sir Hans Sloane are the foundation-stone of the British Museum, British Library and Natural History Museum. A major interdisciplinary digital humanities research project to virtually reunite and analyse Sloane’s collections and his own catalogue inventories is now being planned, […]
Science Voices, Museum Lives
Co-organiser, Science Voices: Scientists Speak About Science and Themselves, Royal Society, London (May 2011) This conference explored the creation and use of historic recordings, bringing science and scientists to skilled historians and the general public through their own vibrant personal voices and testimony. From oral history to collegial obituary, from witness seminar to ‘personal […]
Natural History Museum: CAHR
Vice-Chancellor’s Investment Fund Secondment, Centre for Arts and Humanities Research, Natural History Museum (London): Kingston University (2009 to 2011) This key two-year post was central to a small dynamic team developing an arts and humanities research hub inside this national museum with international reach, where 300 scientists are at work studying plant and animal […]
Split + Splice
Split + Splice: Fragments from the Age of Biomedicine, Exhibition Creative Director, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen (2008 to 2009) Creation and production of this Dibner Award winning show about contemporary biomedicine; leading a team of four post-doctoral medical historians and social scientists, an exhibition designer and a graphic designer; interpreting the Museum’s collections; […]
Thinking Through Objects
Thinking Through Objects, presentation at The Exhibition as a Product and Generator of Knowledge, Deutsches Museum, Munich (2008) This conference explored the contribution exhibitions make to research culture and research methodology, particularly in relation to history of science and science museums. My contribution outlined some of the parallels between text-based and object-based scholarship in […]
Materials Library
Visiting Senior Research Fellow, Materials Library, School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, King’s College London (2007 to 2010) Dedicated to exploring the structure of materials and their relation to form and phenomenology, the Materials Library is a highly interdisciplinary research centre and sample collection. Positing, theorising and demonstrating deep links between the makeup of […]
Visiting Professor, Faculty of Health, Copenhagen
Visiting Associate Professor, Faculty of Health, University of Copenhagen: Medical Museion (2006 – 2007) Working as part of the research team ‘Biomedicine on Display,’ I helped to develop the Art and Biomedicine research stream at the Medical Museion. This included the development and programming of a 30-person international interdisciplinary workshop entitled Biomedicine and Aesthetics […]
Barbara Howard: Canadian Art
Drawing Attention: Barbara Howard’s Ecologies, in Canadian Art Magazine (Summer 2006) As is the case for many others, I have been deeply informed and influenced by the work of artists who came before me. There have also been kind and brilliant mentors and role-models, from childhood on. Sometimes, these have even been the same […]
Image, Data and the Mathematical Sublime
Painting by Numbers: Image, Data and the Mathematical Sublime in Late Twentieth Century Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin (May 2006) Very large data sets are ‘collections’ too: in an increasingly digital world, we need to understand their materiality as continuous with other forms of material culture. We need to […]
Allan Fleming Project
Allan Fleming Project: Publications, Research, Archive Management (2007-2011) History of Graphic Design is a budding field that touches everything from advertising to artists’ books, from word and image studies to printing technologies. I first learned about these subjects quite literally at my father’s knee — yes, that knee in the photo above. Thirty years […]
Charles Darwin Trust
Looking With Darwin, for the Darwin and Twentieth Century Culture working group convened by the Darwin Trust (Wellcome Trust, 2005) A closed consultation on developing Down House and other outreach activities of the Darwin Trust, this event convened a group of about 25 scientists, authors, academics, artists and broadcasters under the direction of Jon […]
You are Here: The Design of Information
You Are Here: The Design of Information, Curatorial Advisor, Design Museum, London (2005) Curatorial Advisor to Lead Curator James Peto concerning overall exhibition structure and science content on this important exhibition looking at information design and graphics; curation of the Cosmos section of the exhibition relating to the history of astrophysics and the development […]
From Le Musée des Sciences to the Science Museum
From Le Musée des Sciences to the Science Museum: fifteen years of evolving methodologies in the art-science interface: Doctoral Thesis, School of Art Architecture and Design, LMU (2004) An analytical reflection on my intellectual and professional trajectory from site specific installations to museum collection interpretation, this doctoral project was a hybrid of PhD by Published Work […]
NESTA Fellowship
Fellow, National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (2004 to 2007) Three year Senior Fellowship awarded by closed nomination for research exploring observational practice across scientific disciplines — astronomy, particle physics, spectroscopy, ophthalmology — and identifying potential methodological alignments between these practices and artistic practices. The National Endowment for Science Technology and the […]
Consultant: Science Museum
Consultant to the Science Museum, London (2003 to 2004)
Consultant: Wellcome Trust
Consultant to the Wellcome Trust, London (2003 to 2004) I have been a judge of the Wellcome Trust SciArt Research and Production Grants and also participated in the international development workshop exploring the form and direction of what was to become the Wellcome Collections exhibitions space in the Euston Road. I contributed to the evaluation […]
Development Manager, Royal Society
Manager, Development Office, the Royal Society, London (2001 to 2003) Successful fundraising is always closely connected to exciting ideas — and is vital to enabling ideas to become form. Having been effective in convincing a variety of arts funders to support cultural projects in which I had been involved, I took the post of […]
Dennis Rosen Memorial Trust
Founding Trustee, Dennis Rosen Memorial Trust for Art and Science (2000 to 2003) My governance experience of this art-science educational trust extended to the creation of a lecture series portfolio for our partnership with the Royal Institution of Great Britain. This built on the annual lectures which we had already been running — roundtable […]
The Publishing Industry and The Book Trade
From very early on I have been as interested in the making and distribution of books as I have been in books themselves and what might be contained within them. I attribute this in part to the primacy of the book as an object in the family home — my father was among other […]
LMU School of Art Architecture and Design
Senior Research Fellowship, Leeds Metropolitan University School of Art, Architecture and Design, (1999 to 2001) Among my research activities in this post was an AHRB-funded research exchange secondment to the Ashmolean Museum to research images of animals in the early modern period with Dr Arthur MacGregor. Working across all three disciplines of the School, […]
Atomism & Animism
Atomism & Animism, Science Museum, London (1997 to 1999) This museum-wide collection interpretation project was the fruit of my two-year research residency at the Science Museum. The exhibition was created with some 130 objects, disposed in 16 installations across the museum’s many galleries and existent displays. The main intellectual focus of Atomism & Animism was […]
Letters and Figures: the book object and the human body
Letters and Figures: relationships between the book object and the human body as metaphor-clues to an epistemology of the book MA Thesis in History of the Book, University of London (Commonwealth Scholarship, 1998) Eschatology and bookbinding are not a pairing that comes immediately to mind — unless you are a bookbinder in the Middle […]
Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
Visiting Lecturer, Visual Culture for BA Graphic Arts and Illustration, Anglia Ruskin University (1996 to 1998) With lecture seminars such as ‘Phylactery,’ about the relationship between inscription and the sacred, and ‘Names and Letters,’ concerning letterforms as embodiments, my teaching contributed to undergraduate understandings of the philosophical issues in all image-making at what is […]
Spencer Landor
Project Manager, Spencer Landor Corporate Design, London (1997) Working with accomplished designers such as John Spencer in a small team, I was involved with supporting projects he effected with clients such as the Royal Exchange Theatre (Manchester); the Terrence Higgins Trust; and Lloyds’ Shipping Registry. This was one of my first posts when I […]
Studiolo
Studiolo: The Collaborative Work of Martha Fleming and Lyne Lapointe, a major retrospective exhibition and accompanying book (Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Artextes Editions and Art Gallery of Windsor, 1997-1998) Covering all of our large scale site-specific work to date, Studiolo charted — as book and as exhibition — the overarching vision of these […]
Camberwell College of Art MA in Book Arts
Visiting Tutor, Camberwell College of Arts MA in Book Arts, University of the Arts London (1996 to 2000) This programme attracts a widely varied group interested in the theory, materiality and potential of the book form – paper, binding, sequentiality, seriality, printing techniques, letterforms, publishing in an expanded field, and more. My work with […]
Open Book
Open Book: Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Science Museum (1996) This object exchange between an art museum and a science museum was a meditation on the communicating vases of matter and spirit. I brought together Joshua Reynolds’ camera obscura, now in the optics collections of the Science Museum, with his portrait Girl With a […]
Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford
Research Residency, Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art (1996 to 1998) The Laboratory at the Ruskin School has been at the forefront of articulating the research activities of artists and making the case for its value. The Lab involved me in a number of innovative projects in the late 1990s, and I produced […]
Vermont College Distance-Learning MFA Program
Part-Time Faculty and Visiting Artist, Vermont College Master of Fine Arts Program, Montpelier USA (1996 to 2001) Originally a Visiting Artist to this pioneering low-residency distance learning MFA, I was subsequently invited to be a Part-Time Faculty Member. Launched in 1990, this MFA was one of the first, and is still one of the […]
Concordia University MFA Program, Montreal
Lecturer, Critical Theory and Studio Practice, Concordia University Master of Fine Arts Program, Montreal (1995) I created a unique course to teach research skills to MFA students in direct relation to their own studio practice, and gave advanced tutorials in critical thinking and research skills for fine arts practitioners at MFA level. My approach was […]
The Spirit and The Letter and The Evil Eye
The Spirit and The Letter and The Evil Eye, Bath Festivals Trust ‘WellSpring’ (with Lyne Lapointe, 1994) Bookbinding, marbled paper, letterforms, the printed word, eye-hand coordination, amulets, craftsmanship, inkhorns and more all came under scrutiny in this site-specific project grafted seamlessly into the existent Book Museum at Bayntun’s Bookbindery. Through the very body of the […]
Introduction & Index
Introduction & Index, silkscreened translucent banners and artists’ bookwork (1994): Printed Matter (New York); Artexte@MACM (Montreal); Bath Public Library (UK); Ridington Room, University of British Columbia (Vancouver), C Magazine (Toronto) A meditation on censorship and the power of print, and on the editorial apparatus as a constraining device with a complex subtext, this work […]
The Wilds and The Deep
The Wilds and The Deep: Martha Fleming & Lyne Lapointe, Battery Maritime Ferry Terminal New York City (1990, produced with Creative Time) At the bottom tip of Manhattan, this large-scale site project explored the origins of museums in colonial practice. Next to the Staten Island Ferry terminal, the Battery Maritime Building — then partially […]
Eat Me / Drink Me / Love Me
Eat Me / Drink Me / Love Me: The New Museum (New York, with Lyne Lapointe, 1989) Invited in 1987 by curator Bill Olander to create a work for The New Museum, we devised a project about the interplay between social convention, literature, and natural history. Eat Me / Drink Me /Love Me took […]
La Donna Delinquenta
La Donna Delinquenta (Montreal, with Lyne Lapointe, 1987) The abandoned Corona vaudeville theatre was the perfect locus for exploring meeting points between social marginalisation and the society of the spectacle. ‘Technologies of the Self’ met Plato’s Cave in this large-scale site-specific installation which took place in Montreal’s Saint Henri of the Tanneries area, a […]
Le Musée des Sciences
Le Musée des Sciences (Montréal, with Lyne Lapointe, 1984) This major site-specific installation — a ‘history of the body’ before its time — took place over the entirety of an abandoned beaux arts Post Office Building at 1700 Notre Dame West in the Little Burgundy area of Montréal. Using everything from the sorting room […]
Projet Building / Caserne #14
Projet Building / Caserne #14, for the abandoned Fire Station 14 (Montreal, with Lyne Lapointe, 1983) The first of our ‘Montreal triptych’ of site-specific projects occupying entire buildings in the 1980s, Projet Building / Caserne #14 took place in an abandoned Fire Station in the Plateau area of the city. It explored the private life […]
Artforum, Vanguard, Fuse, Afterimage, Live, Body Politic
Until late 1984, I continued to publish in a wide range of art magazines and journals of cultural critique, having served on editorial boards of FUSE, The Body Politic, and Fireweed — magazines with international reach produced in Toronto. The two issues of Artforum pictured above — April and May, 1981 — contained my reviews […]
Art Metropole Video Distribution
Distribution Manager, Artists’ Videotapes, Art Metropole, Toronto (1979 to 1981) Under the direction of Peggy Gale, Art Metropole was one of the first organisations in the world to curate, archive and distribute artists’ videotapes. This was a very exciting time for this medium, then only about a decade old, as video equipment itself moved […]