Art Against the Grain of Collective Sisyphus: The Case of Allan Sekula’s Ship of Fools / The Dockers’ Museum (2010-2013)

Supported by research grants from the KU Leuven (OT) and the FWO-Flanders, the Lieven Gevaert Centre, under the supervision of Hilde Van Gelder, Mieke Bleyen and Edwin Carels, is pursuing extensive research on Allan Sekula’s Ship of Fools / The Dockers’ Museum (2010-2013). This work, which Sekula made during the last years of his life, contains: (1) a corpus of thirty-three framed photographs, two slide projections containing over one hundred images, and texts by Sekula; (2) a collection of ca. 1250 graphic images, sculptures, paintings, photographs, postcards, and vernacular objects. Sekula purchased all of these in antiquarian stores or on flea markets, some in souvenir shops, and many more online (in particular on EBay). The MHKA (Antwerp), structural partner in this project, has acquired the full work from the Allan Sekula Estate. The research project’s first outcome is a book publication in the Lieven Gevaert Series (2015).

PhD project
Research: Anja Isabel Scheider
Supervision: Hilde Van Gelder & Mieke Bleyen
Duration:
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Lieven Gevaert Centre
KU Leuven, Faculty of Arts
Blijde Inkomststraat 21 pb 3313
B-3000 Leuven
België

Lieven Gevaert Centre
UC Louvain, Archéologie et d'histoire d'art
FIAL - Place Blaise Pascal 1 bte L3.03.13
B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve
Belgique