People
Dr Isobel Whitelegg
Associate Professor
School/Department: Museum Studies, School of
Email: icjw1@leicester.ac.uk
Profile
Isobel Whitelegg is an an art historian and curator specialising in modern and contemporary art from Latin America (especially Brazil) and the history and historiography of contemporary art and its institutions. She completed her MA (History & Theory of Latin American Art) and her PhD at the Department of Art History, University of Essex and subsequently co-devised two AHRC funded research projects: Latin American Art in the UK and Meeting Margins Transnational Art in Europe & Latin America.
Before joining Museum Studies in 2015, Isobel occupied two roles that bridged higher education and the arts sector: LJMU Research Curator and Convenor of Tate Research Centre: Curatorial Practice & Museology (2014-2015) and Head of Research & Public Programmes Nottingham Contemporary (2011-2014).
Research
Isobel Whitelegg's research is international in scope, but centres on Latin America, and focuses on the dynamically formed legacies of non-collecting arts institutions. A sustained focus of recent work has been collaborative research centring on the archives of Sao Paulo’s prominent international art biennial (1951-). With the support of the Arquivo Histórico Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and FAPESP, she worked with a group of Brazilian scholars to research its organisational development and artistic activities during Brazil’s military regime (1964-1985).
Supervision
Current:
Caroline Fucci. Brazilian Contemporary Art in the Global Biennial Context, AHRC M4C Scholarship
Victoria Guzman. Power Struggles in the Art Museum: Authority or Authorities? AHRC M4C Scholarship (Co-supervised with Dr Alice Tilche)
Catalina Imízcoz. Modernity and the Exhibitionary Form. AHRC M4C Scholarship
Cher Zou. Locating the Alternative Art Institution in the Chinese Context. International Excellence Scholarship
Eleni Ganiti. Permanent Collecting and the Museum of Contemporary Art
Completed:
Blanca Jové Alcalde. Creating a Politically active, Plural and Critical Public Sphere: discursive programmes at contemporary art institutions. AHRC M3C Scholarship.
Eloisa Rodrigues. Mapping Brazilian Art in Public Collections Across the UK. AHRC M3C Scholarship
Yang Chen. Exhibitionary Spaces in Japanese Art, 1860s-1970s: Models, Terminologies and Territories
Laura Dudley. From Re-Construction to Co-Production: remembering and restaging past participatory exhibitions. AHRC M3C Scholarship
Teaching
Press and media
Contemporary art institutions. Latin American Art. Brazilian Art.
Activities
Academic Advisory Board, Tate Papers
Board Member, The Biennial Foundation
Board of Directors, Primary Studios, Nottingham
Editorial Committee, Selo Editorial do PPG-AC UFJF (Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora)
Conferences
2022.‘Medalla/Metzger’, Strange Universe: Explorations of the Modern in Post-war Britain 1945-1965, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Barbican, London
2021. (Convenor) ‘Meeting Margins Revisited’ Worldviews: Latin American Art & the Decolonial Turn, University of Cambridge/ UAL (online)
2020. ‘Curating Signals London’ Bellas Artes Projects, Manila, Philippines (online)
2020. (Co-convenor), Biennialisation and its Counter narratives, CAA Annual Conference, Chicago
2019. Exhibition History and Institutional Context, University of São Paulo Museum of Contemporary Art
2018. (Participant), Rethinking Research in the Art Museum, Tate Britain, London
2018. (Invited Faculty), La Escuela de Critica de Arte, Proyeto Siqueros, Cuernavaca, Mexico
2017. (Participant), Black Artists and Modernism (BAM) Study Day, InIVA, London
2017. ‘The Internationalism of Signals London’ Transnational Cities: Tokyo and London, Tate Modern, London
2017. The Biennial Model in Latin America’, Semana de Arte, São Paulo
2017. Rehabilitating the Biennial’, University of Porto
2016. ‘Provincialising Critique, Artist & Institution in 1970s São Paulo’, MUAC, Mexico City
2015 (Convenor), School of the South: Lessons in Latin American Art, Studio Voltaire, London
2014. ‘At the Crux of the Post war, Collective Exhibitions at Signals London, 1964-66’, Post war: Between the Atlantic and the Pacific, Haus der Kunst, Munich
2013. ‘Everything was connected’, London Art Worlds: Mobile, Contingent and Ephemeral Networks, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Centre for Modern Studies, University of York
2012. ‘Inventing Latin America, Between Theory and Practice’, Rethinking Latin American Art in the 21st Century. Getty Research Institute/Museo de Arte de Lima
2012. Keywords: Out (with Suely Rolnik), InIVA, London
2010. Keywords: Absolutely Postcolonial (with Peter Hallward), InIVA, London
2010. Aleijadinho, Michelangelo Brasileiro: Racial Democracy & Other Brazilian Modernist Myths', CGAC, Santiago de Compostela
2009. (Co-convenor) Transnational Latin American Art from 1950 to the Present, First International Research Forum for Graduate Students and Emerging Scholars, University of Texas at Austin
2008. A Bienal Não Vista da Fora, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, 28 Bienal Internacional de São Paulo
Media coverage
Philomena Epps, 'Signals Gallery (1964-66): An Auto-Destructive Art History' (exhibition review) Frieze 197 (2018)
Isobel Harbison & Lorena Muñoz-Alonso, 'Double-take: Signals: If You Like I Shall Grow' (exhibition review) Art Agenda / e-flux July 2018
Qualifications
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy