The Art of Curation Lecture Series

White Fabulation: a prehistory of the 'culture war’

Join us for another exciting The Art of Curation Lecture Series with Professor Dan Hicks visiting from The University of Oxford and Pitt Rivers Museum in the UK.

This talk introduces some of the themes of Dan's forthcoming book, Every Monument Will Fall: a prehistory of the culture war (Penguin 2025). It begins with a simple historical question. How might we best describe the phenomenon through which art and culture was weaponised from the 1880s to the 1920s: from White supremacist statues in the streets to stolen objects in museums, and from the preservation of heritage to the founding of university departments of anthropology and archaeology. Joining the dots from the de-named Kroeber Hall at Berkeley to the unfallen figure of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford, the talk sets current ideas over a so-called 'culture war' in longer-term perspective. In doing so it presents a prehistory of a war on culture that began with what we might call 'White Fabulation' and continued into the 21st century, even in the seminar rooms and theory reading groups — far closer in fact than you might imagine.

Hosted by Graduate Program in Curatorial and Museum Studies, The University of Adelaide
Facilitated by Dr Ania Kotarba
For further information regarding the event, please contact Dr Ania Kotarba at museumstudies@adelaide.edu.au