Breaking down Iconoclasm with Stacy Boldrick

Martina Borghi talks to Dr Stacy Boldrick from the School of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester about iconoclasm - the destruction of art! She tells us how museums approach this subject and discusses how to present the history of objects that have undergone various forms of damage.

Stacy's bio: https://le.ac.uk/people/stacy-boldrick

Artworks and artists’ projects mentioned:

Diego Velázquez, The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus), oil on canvas, 1647-51 - https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/diego-velazquez-the-toilet-of-venus-the-rokeby-venus

 John Cassidy and others, Edward Colston statue,1895/2020. Bronze, mixed media M shed (Bristol Museums) display, 2021 - https://exhibitions.bristolmuseums.org.uk/the-colston-statue/

 Kate Davis, Reversibility (Militant Methods), 2011. Framed pencil drawing and silkscreen print on paper, 135 x 80cm - https://katedavisartist.co.uk/peace-at-last-2/ 

 Sonia Boyce, Black artists and Modernism (2015-2018) - https://www.arts.ac.uk/ual-decolonising-arts-institute/ual-related-activities/black-artists-and-modernism 

 Hew Locke, Patriots series (2018) - http://www.hewlocke.net/patriots.html 

 Titus Kaphar, Impressions of Liberty, Wood (American sycamore and plywood), etched glass, sculpting foam, graphite and LED lights, 2017 - https://artmuseum.princeton.edu/collections/objects/132361?lat=40.349209&lon=-74.660278 

 Francisco Goya, Disasters of War (Los Desastres de la Guerra), series of prints, 1810, Etching, drypoint, burin, burnisher - https://www.parkwestgallery.com/francisco-goya-disasters-of-war/ 

 Steve McQueen, Bass, 2024 (Dia Beacon) - https://www.diaart.org/exhibition/exhibitions-projects/steve-mcqueen-exhibition 

 Raqs Media Collective, Coronation Park (2015) - https://works.raqsmediacollective.net/index.php/2015/12/05/coronation-park/ 

Exhibitions mentioned:

 Iconoclash (2002), ZKM Medienmuseum (Karlsruhe Germany).  - https://zkm.de/en/exhibition/2002/05/iconoclash 

Books and articles mentioned in the Podcast:

-        David Freedberg, The Power of Images (Yale University Press, 1989)

-        David Freedberg, Iconoclasm (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021)

-        Dario Gamboni, The Destruction of Art: Iconoclasm and Vandalism since the French Revolution, 2nd edn (London: Reaktion, 2018)

-        Stacy Boldrick and Richard Clay (eds.), Iconoclasm: Contested Objects, Contested Terms (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)

-        Stacy Boldrick, Iconoclasm and the museum (Oxon: Routledge, 2020)

-        Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (eds), Iconoclash: Beyond the Image Wars in Science, Religion, and Art, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 2002)

-        Margaret Aston, Broken Idols of the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016)

-        James Simpson, Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010)

-        Ramon Sarró, The Politics of Religious Change on the Upper Guinea Coast Iconoclasm Done and Undone (London: Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute, 2009)

-        James Noyes, The Politics of Iconoclasm: Religion, Violence and the Culture of Image-Breaking in Christianity and Islam (London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013)

-        Robert Bevan, The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at war (London: Reaktion, 2007)

-        Henry Chapman, Iconoclasm and Later Prehistory (London: Routledge, 2018)

-        Fabio Rambelli, Eric Reinders, Buddhism and Iconoclasm in East Asia (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012)

-        Christoph Brumann and David Berliner (eds), World Heritage on the Ground. Etnographic prospective (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2016)

-        José Antonio Gonzalez Zarandona, ‘Heritage destruction in Myanmar’s Rakhine state: legal and illegal iconoclasm’ in International Journal of Heritage Studies, 5 (2020), pp. 519-538