The Cluster
The Art, Museums and Digital Cultures cluster forms part of the Museum Studies Group at the Institute of Art History, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal. It is an informal research group established with the objective of fostering transdisciplinary debates within the field of digital cultures, focusing on contemporary art and museums. This cluster draws on the work previously undertaken by the team members, expanding and consolidating their already existing networks of contacts, in order to develop collaborative projects that combine research and theoretical production with criticism and the curatorship of digital and web-based artistic practices.
The Art, Museums and Digital Cultures cluster forms part of the Museum Studies Group at the Institute of Art History, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal. It is an informal research group established with the objective of fostering transdisciplinary debates within the field of digital cultures, focusing on contemporary art and museums. This cluster draws on the work previously undertaken by the team members, expanding and consolidating their already existing networks of contacts, in order to develop collaborative projects that combine research and theoretical production with criticism and the curatorship of digital and web-based artistic practices.
Team
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Helena Barranha (coord.)
Helena Barranha is an Assistant Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Universidade de Lisboa, and a Researcher at the Institute of Art History, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, where she is a member of the Museum Studies Group and coordinates the Cluster of Art, Museums and Digital Cultures. She has a Master’s Degree in the Management of Cultural Heritage (University of Algarve, 2001) and a PhD in Architecture, with the thesis Architecture of Contemporary Art Museums in Portugal. From Urban Intervention to the Design of Exhibition Space (University of Porto, 2008). She was the Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art – Museu do Chiado, in Lisbon (2009-2012), and President of the Access Culture Association (2022-2023). She was also Principal Investigator of the FCT project unplace – a museum without a place (2014-2015) and Co-coordinator of the international collaborative project Post-Internet Cities (2017), promoted by maat – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, IHA-NOVA FCSH and IST in cooperation with e-flux Architecture. Her current research focuses on cultural heritage, the architecture of contemporary art museums and digital cultures and she has published widely on these topics, both in Portugal and abroad. More information and selected publications can be found here. |
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Annet Dekker
Annet Dekker is a curator and researcher. Currently she is Assistant Professor of Archival and Information Studies and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam and Visiting Professor and co-director of the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image at London South Bank University. She has published numerous essays and edited several volumes, among others, Documentation as Art (co-edited with Gabriella Giannachi, Routledge 2022) and Curating Digital Art. From Presenting and Collecting Digital Art to Networked Co-Curating (Valiz 2021). Her monograph, Collecting and Conserving Net Art (Routledge 2018) is a seminal work in the field of digital art conservation. More information available at: http://aaaan.net |
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Hélia Marçal
Lecturer in History of Art, Materials and Technology at the Department of History of Art, University College London. Prior to this appointment, she was Fellow in Contemporary Art Conservation and Research of the research project Reshaping the Collectible: When Artworks Live in the Museum, at Tate, London (2018-2020). Since 2016, she has been the Coordinator of the Theory, History and Ethics of Conservation Working Group of the Committee for Conservation of the International Council of Museums (ICOM-CC). She is a researcher at the Institute of Art History, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal. Her current research interests are related to feminist new materialisms, material histories of activist artworks, ethics and performativity of cultural heritage, the conservation of time-based media and performance art, as well as both the materiality of contemporary art and the ways in which it is positioned and negotiated through museum, heritage, and conservation practices. Applying feminist epistemological lenses, she often explores issues of performativity, participation, partiality and positionality in both her research and teaching. She has published studies about conservation theory and ethics, embodied memories and the body-archive, and public policies for participation in, and the stewardship of, cultural heritage, having been awarded the Taylor & Francis and ICON Outstanding Contribution Award in 2017. Her recent book project looks at current forms of activist performance and questions the wider politics of the conservation of cultural heritage in the public sphere. |
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Joana Simões Henriques
Joana Simões Henriques graduated in Cultural Communication from the Faculty of Human Sciences, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Lisbon, having specialised in Cultural Communication at LUMSA – Libera Università Maria Ss. Assunta, Rome, Italy – and has a Master's degree in Studies and Management of Culture from ISCTE, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, with a project dissertation entitled Monsanto Contemporary Art Park. She has worked in the departments of Curatorship and Collection Management, and Artistic Education, at the Gulbenkian Museum, in Lisbon, and has also served on the board of the Paulo Amaro Contemporary Art Gallery. Since 2010, she has been working with the EDP Foundation as a researcher and curator, where she is responsible for education programming for museums. Since 2016, she has been working on the education and public programmes for the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (maat), in Lisbon, and has had several essays published on Contemporary Art. Her research interests include museums, contemporary art and architecture, cultural mediation, and culture as a tool for social and human development. She has organised several projects and conferences on these topics. |
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José Ramón Alcalá
Multimedia artist, curator, and author, born in Valencia (Spain), in 1960. Head of Art and New Media at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, Faculty of Fine Arts of Cuenca. Director of the international indexed journal ASRI, Art and Society, Digital Humanities Magazine. Co-Director of the Ibero-American Observatory of Digital and Electronic Arts (UDELAR, Montevideo /MIDECIANT, UCLM). Director of the International Museum of Electrography (MIDECIANT) of Cuenca, from 1989 until 2018. Creator and coordinator of the Contemporary Art Collections and Archives (CAAC) of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Cuenca, from its creation in 2013 until 2018. Responsible for the creation of the Spanish Archive of Media Art (AEMA). Head of the research group Cultural Interfaces, Art and New Media of UCLM, from its creation in 2005 until 2018. He received the National Chalcography Award of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (MIDECIANT) for his innovative contributions to the graphic arts (Madrid, 1999). Principal researcher of R + D + I projects of national and European excellence on the applications of new technologies in artistic creation and virtual museography. Author of books, such as: La Piel de la Imagen (Valencia, 2011); Ser Digital, Manual for Converts to Electronic Culture (Santiago, Chile, 2011); How do I Hang a Virtual Box? (Gijón, 2009); Monsters, Ghosts and Aliens, Poetics of Representation in the Cybersociety (Madrid, 2004); or Ars & Machina, Artistic Electrography in the MIDE Collection (Santander, 2004). Director and curator of biennials and awards, such as the International Observatory of Electronic Arts of Gijón (OOH), Digital Art Awards LÚMEN_EX of University of Extremadura, Festival of Electronic Arts of Valencia Digital Media 1.0. As an artist, in 1983, he created the Alcalacanales team (with Fernando Ñ. Canales), whose exhibitions and activities linked to artistic creation with the new media continued on the international circuit until 1994. |
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José Rui Pardal Pina
José Rui Pardal Pina (b. 1988) was raised in Campo Maior and studied Arts at the high school in Elvas, Portugal. He completed his Master's Degree in Architecture at Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, in 2012, and worked at the studio António Barreiros Ferreira – Tetractys Arquitectos. In 2016, he attended the Postgraduate Course in Art Curation at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University of Lisbon, and began to collaborate with the Portuguese art and culture magazine Umbigo. He also writes occasionally for the website sculpturenature.com, an online platform which maps contemporary sculpture parks around the world. As an independent researcher and writer, he is interested in the transdisciplinary study of arts, politics, architecture, cinema, literature and design. Within the cluster, his research work focuses on architecture for digital art, derivative artworks and networked artistic and curatorial practices. |
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Juan Martín Prada
Juan Martín Prada, PhD, is a professor at the University of Cádiz (Spain), where he heads the "Contemporary aesthetic theories" research group. He is the author of numerous articles and essays about art, media culture and visual studies, as well as of the following books: La apropiación posmoderna. Arte, práctica apropiacionista y Teoría de la posmodernidad (Fundamentos, 2001), Prácticas artísticas e Internet en la época de las redes sociales (AKAL, Madrid, 2012, 2nd edition 2015), Otro tiempo para el arte. Cuestiones y comentarios sobre el arte actual (Sendemà, 2012, 2nd edition February 2019) and El ver y las imágenes en el tiempo de Internet (AKAL, Madrid, 2018). He has contributed to many printed and digital publications, including such journals as Fibreculture – The Journal, Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas REIS (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, CIS), Revista de Filosofía, Estudios visuales, EXIT, EXIT Book, Red Digital, Flúor, Papers d'art (Fundació Espais d'Art Contemporani), Temps d'art, Transversal, DeForma, "Cultura/as" – La Vanguardia (Barcelona), etc. He was the director of the platform Inclusiva-net at Medialab-Prado (Madrid) and has given more than a hundred talks and seminars worldwide, including at such places as MNCARS (National Museum of Contemporary Art Reina Sofía, Madrid), MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León), CGAC (Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea), etc. More information and selected publications available at: https://www.juanmartinprada.net/ |
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Luis D. Rivero Moreno
PhD in Art History (University of Granada, Spain). Associate Professor at Universidad de León (Spain), currently he is also a Visiting Researcher at the Institute of Art History, School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (Portugal). He has worked in different areas related to education, arts and culture, mainly in public institutions (European Commission, University of Granada, Extremadura Regional Government, among others). As a researcher his work focuses on the realm of contemporary art and its relations with wide aspects of contemporary culture and society: new media art, art and new technologies, cultural heritage and innovation, art museums... He has carried out academic mobility programmes in Brussels, Berlin and Lisbon and cooperates with online universities such as UNED (National University of Distance Education of Spain) and UOC (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya), where he is an Adjunct Professor in the Visual Culture and New Media course. He is a member of different research networks, such as EuropeanaPro. He was a member of the task force of the European Year of Cultural Heritage 2018 and he has also worked in different research projects, including the European Commission H2020 Rock Project. Regeneration and Optimization of Cultural Heritage in Creative and Knowledge Cities (2018-2021). He has given lectures and talks in congresses, conferences and seminars and published several articles and papers, nationally and internationally. Currently, he is developing the project NEWER. New Media Art in Portugal at Universidade Nova de Lisboa with the support of NextGenerationEU Funds. More information is available here. |
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Pablo Gobira
Pablo Gobira is a professor of curatorship at the Guignard School at the State University of Minas Gerais (UEMG) and also part of the permanent faculty of the Postgraduate Programme in Arts (UEMG), the Postgraduate Programme in Knowledge Management and Organisation at the School of Information Science (UFMG) and the Postgraduate Programme in Built Environment and Sustainable Heritage at the School of Architecture (UFMG). He has curated several art residencies and exhibitions in partnership with various cultural institutions (Casa Fiat de Cultura, Palácio das Artes, Centro Cultural da Escola de Design, Oi Futuro Flamengo, Sucesu-MG/FINIT, PROEx/UEMG, among others). As a productivity researcher (PQ/CNPq) and a postdoctoral supervisor he studies the preservation of artworks collections and digital archives in a museum context and beyond. He has worked as a curatorial consultant in museums and web 3.0, metaverse, NFTs, blockchain and other types of distributed networks. Current projects: • Digital Arts, Art Collections and Smart Cities: Production and Access to Art Through Innovative Tools (since 2021) • Artificial Landscapes: Convergences Between Artificial Intelligence, IoT, 5G Communication and the Smart City (since 2023) • Digital Collections in Art Museums: Web 3.0, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs) and Metaverses in Digital Preservation (since 2023) More information available at: http://linktr.ee/labfront CV in Portuguese: http://lattes.cnpq.br/8243001226255815 |
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Raquel Pereira
Raquel Pereira graduated in Art History from the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon (2010) and finished her Master's Degree in Museum Studies at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University of Lisbon (2013) with a dissertation about curatorship of contemporary art exhibitions, focusing on the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Serralves Foundation, in Porto. She was a FCT BI-research fellow in the project “unplace: a museum without a place” whose main focus was on contemporary art exhibitions specifically produced for virtual and networked contexts, namely digital and net art. She has collaborated with several institutions in the fields of cultural heritage, art and museology, working as a cultural educator, exhibition assistant and production and communication assistant. Her main research interests relate to digital cultures, contemporary art and museum studies. |
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Rita Macedo
Assistant Professor at the Department of Conservation and Restoration, School of Science and Technology, NOVA University of Lisbon. She has a BA in History and a Master’s Degree in Contemporary Art History from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (NOVA FCSH). In her research, she combines conservation and art history, as was the case with her PhD thesis Contemporary Art Challenges to Conservation and Restoration (FCT NOVA, 2008). She is responsible for the Laboratory and Documentation for the Preservation of Contemporary Art at DCR, FCT NOVA, where she supervises a group of junior researchers (PhD and Master’s Degrees) who are studying the theory and practice of making documentation for the conservation of complex artworks, including time-based media and performance. Rita Macedo is a researcher at the Institute of Art History (NOVA FCSH), where she is part of the Museum Studies group. She has been a member of several national and international research networks and projects such as NeCCAR (2010-14), New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art (NACCA), a Marie Curie ITN (2015-2019). Currently, her research interests are mainly in themes linked to the question of values and social justice in heritage and art preservation, and the ways in which contemporary art conservation impacts the museum. |
Former Members
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Patrícia de Sousa Melo
Patrícia de Sousa Melo has a degree in Anthropology and a diploma in Culture, Communication and Information Technologies from ISCTE, Lisbon, and a Master’s Degree in Museum Studies from the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, NOVA University of Lisbon. She is currently studying for a PhD in Art History – Artistic Heritage and Museum Studies, at the same faculty, while working as a researcher at the Institute of Art History, with a grant from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. She is a member of both the Access Culture Association and the Memory Studies Association (“Memory and Arts” research group). In the past, she worked at the National Museum of Ethnology, Lisbon, on the digitisation of ethnographic collections and their public dissemination through the Web. Her research is centred on the application of ICT and emerging technologies in museums and cultural heritage (digital presentation and interpretation) and the role of museums in the 21st century in Asian post-colonial contexts (namely in Macau, China), in relation to their political dimension and their relationship with cultural and national identity. Other research interests include Digital Art History, Data Art and critical approaches to digital memory and nostalgia. |
