Inspire. Support. Create.
Inspire. Support. Create.
Laura House at the Foundling Museum
Curatorial Fellowship 2020
Artisa's latest Curatorial Fellow, Laura House, began her fellowship as we entered lockdown in March 2020. Together, with the Foundling Museum, we decided to move ahead with the planned recuritment. Since then, Laura House has developed an exciting exhibition exploring the representation of orphans, foundlings, adoptees and foster children in comics and graphic novels. Her project is to be shown at the Foundling Museum in 2022 and was inspired by Lemn Sissay’s Foundling Fellowship piece, the graphic installation, Superman was a Foundling.
The Fellowship has enabled the Museum to unlock the full potential of this idea, develop it for tour (perhaps even internationally) and provide organisational learning and valuable partnerships to establish a future touring programme. It aimed to provide an opportunity for an experienced curator to develop their practice, through creating a touring exhibition on an engaging and important subject, working two days per week over 9 months.
Lockdown caused substantial difficulties for some areas of Laura’s work, such as arranging museum store visits during the intense lockdown of early 2020, to view collections where extensive catalogue records or images were not available. However, potential lending institutions were as helpful as they could possibly be, accepting broad loan requests with the aim of refining them at a later date. Identifying and contacting living artists proved somewhat more straightforward. Laura completed her fellowship with confirmed, agreed loans in place from a range of international, national and individual lenders. The resulting cast of characters is international and excitingly rich in its diversity of characters, authors, life experiences, forms and time periods.
“When I started this Fellowship, I was motivated to acquire a working knowledge of specific exhibitions practices (e.g. touring development and protocol), a new subject (comics), and the organisational structure of the Foundling Museum. I have been able to achieve success in these three areas (and beyond) thanks to the Fellowship framework and the generosity of the Foundling Museum staff." — Laura House
Although Laura has meticulously documented her work, to prepare for handover, we have managed to find the resource to secure her as a freelance curator, so that she can bring the exhibition to fruition, contribute an essay to the catalogue and participate in exhibition programming.
It has been encouraging for the Museum to have such a strong future project in development, while other projects nearer at hand have had to be significantly reshaped due to Covid. The Museum is delighted with all that Laura has been able to achieve, especially in such a difficult context, and very pleased the decision was made to press ahead with the Fellowship.