What if a museum collection was treated like a musical or choreographic score—existing both as a historical document and as the material for an interpretive performance that could be played at any moment? Join us for this thought experiment at the eighth annual Anne d’Harnoncourt Symposium: Museum as Score. We’ll discuss how the perception of the museum as a static archive is upended in today’s cultural context in which durational, event-based, and experimental artworks, exhibitions, projects, and programs are on the rise. Beginning with the assessment of the historical role of the museum as a product of the Enlightenment, this symposium will consider the museum not as a timeless repository of objects, but as an open invitation to be activated through a variety of time-based activities and experiences. The symposium will place emphasis on the discussion of recent exhibitions and works by contemporary artists that have a durational or ephemeral nature as well as the intersection between museological institutions and contemporary dance.

September 11, 2016
Case Studies
10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. | Rainey Auditorium, Penn Museum | Free
Welcome by Karen Redrobe, the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe
Endowed Professor in Film Studies, Department Chair at the
University of Pennsylvania.

These talks will be moderated by Christine Poggi, Professor of
History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and Miriam Giguere, Department Head of Performing Arts at Drexel University.
Case Study 1: Jeanne van Heeswijk “Performing the Not-Yet”
Case Study 2: Molly Nesbit “Walk A Round Time”
Case Study 3: Janet Kraynak “Philippe Parreno has left the building”
Performance of DUO2015 by William Forsythe

12:00 and 4:00 p.m. | Dorrance Galleries, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Choreographer William Forsythe imagines a duet as timepiece.
Using the sound of breath as musical score, two dancers re-create the movement of hands on a clock. Through a dazzling pattern of tumbling, twirling, and weaving, their bodies register and reveal the passage of
time in space through movement. DUO2015 is a reinterpretation of Forsythe’s Duo (1996). It originally premiered in 2015 at the New York
City Center. This is the institutional premiere of DUO2015.
Choreography, stage, costume, and light design by William Forsythe
Performance by Riley Watts and Brigel Gjoka
Approximately 17 minutes

Keynote Conversation
2:00 p.m. | Rainey Auditorium, Penn Museum | Free
Featuring choreographers Boris Charmatz and William Forsythe,
moderated by Carlos Basualdo, The Keith L. and Katherine Sachs
Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art