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Harriet presents her work at the ICDHS conference in October 2020

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On Saturday 17th October, Harriet gave a paper entitled ‘Exhibitions as Political “Demonstrations”: Artists International Association’s For Liberty Exhibition, London 1943′ at the ICDHS12 conference. In the paper she explored the idea of exhibitions having the capacity to act as political ‘demonstrations’ – a term used by the AIA to describe their exhibitions – by considering For Liberty’s site, installation, content, integration of graphics, space, text and image.

The 2020 ICDHS conference was organised by the International Committee for Design History and Design Studies and convened by Dr Fedja Vukić (Institute for the Research of the Avant-garde, Zagreb), with keynotes from design theorist Matko Meštrović and Professor Yuko Kikuchi  icdhs12.org. Harriet spoke in a strand entitled ‘Politics and Design: Past, Present, Future’ co-chaired by Barbara Predan (Academy of Fine Arts, University of Ljubljana) and Tevfik Balcıoğlu (ARUCAD University, Northern Cyprus). Her paper is published in the conference proceedings entitled Lessons to Learn? Past Design Experiences and Contemporary Design Practices edited by Fedja Vukić and Iva Kostešić (ISBN 978-953-7703-67-7).

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New ‘In Conversation’ series launched by Centre for Design History

In her role as co-leader of University of Brighton’s Centre for Design History’s Graphic Design Histories strand, Harriet Atkinson has co-curated a series of four ‘In Conversation’ events, to be held online in autumn 2020. These events will showcase four recent publications by fellow Centre for Design History members: on Thursday 12 November 2020 Tim Satterthwaite, author of Modernist Magazines and the Social Ideal will be in conversation with Kim Sichel (Boston) and Jeremy Aynsley (Brighton), chaired by Harriet. On Thursday 19 November 2020 Damon Taylor, author of Moving Objects: A Cultural History of Emotive Design will be in conversation with Deborah Sugg Ryan (Portsmouth), chaired by Annebella Pollen (Brighton). On Wednesday 25 November 2020 Zeina Maasri author of Cosmopolitan Radicalism: Visual Politics of Beirut’s Global Sixties will be in conversation with Hala Auji (American University of Beirut) and Louise Purbrick (Brighton), chaired by Jeremy Aynsley (Brighton). Lastly, on Wednesday 9 December 2020 Ceren Ozpinar and Mary Kelly (University College Cork) will be in conversation about their co-edited book Under the Skin: Feminist Art and Art Histories from the Middle East and North Africa Today, chaired by Megha Rajguru (Brighton).

Harriet is also co-convening the Exhibitions Histories Reading Group during this academic year alongside Brighton PhD students Kate Guy and Andrea Potts. Over five meetings we will discuss approaches to using interviews with exhibition makers; how to interrogate exhibitions whose context and/or content is fraught; how far exhibitions allow us to understand a historical moment; and how far exhibitions can shape, mediate or control the experience of spectators past and present.