Researcher

Associate Professor Lizzie Muller

Fields of Research (FoR)

Critical heritage, museum and archive studies, Heritage, archive and museum studies, Art history, theory and criticism, Design history, theory and criticism, Heritage tourism, visitor and audience studies, Digital and electronic media art, Interaction and experience design, Data visualisation and computational (incl. parametric and generative) design, Curatorial and Related Studies

Biography

Lizzie Muller is a curator and researcher specialising in audience experience and interdisciplinary collaboration. She researches the future of museums as sites of knowledge production, and the relationship between curatorial practice and changing disciplinary structures. Her international exhibitions celebrate the intersection of art, science and technology. Lizzie is an elected Councillor of the Sydney Culture Network , and co-founder with...view more

Lizzie Muller is a curator and researcher specialising in audience experience and interdisciplinary collaboration. She researches the future of museums as sites of knowledge production, and the relationship between curatorial practice and changing disciplinary structures. Her international exhibitions celebrate the intersection of art, science and technology. Lizzie is an elected Councillor of the Sydney Culture Network , and co-founder with Keir Winesmith of the bi-monthly Sydney Culture Data Salon.

Lizzie’s research draws together curatorial practice with theories and methods from participatory design and interaction design. She has developed audience-centred curatorial methodologies and innovative approaches to audience research. Her work with audience experience extends to the fields of preservation and archiving, particularly experiential documentation and oral histories of media art.

Major exhibitions

In In 2018/19 Lizzie co-curated the exhibition Human Non Human with Katie Dyer at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The show includes four commissions that speculate on human futures through the themes of food, work, sex and belief. Each work explores the entanglement of humans with non human agents and actors, including bees, jelly, data and buildings. The exhibition includes an experimental interactive digital catalogue that maps the interconnection of themes and ideas in the show: http://human-non-human.info/

In 2017/18 Lizzie co-curated (with Holly Williams) A Working Model of the World – an exhibition exploring the role of models in creating and sharing knowledge across all disciplines. The exhibition was staged in UNSW Galleries (May-July 2017), the Sheila C Johnson Design Centre, Parsons, The New School, New York (Sep-Dec 2017) and LifeSpace at the University of Dundee (June-Sep 2018).

Lizzie’s previous curatorial projects include Lively Objects at the Museum of Vancouver with Caroline Langill (2015); Awfully Wonderful: Science Fiction in Contemporary Art curated with Bec Dean at Sydney’s Performance Space (2011); The Art of Participatory Design, with Lian Loke, a programme of creative research projects that accompanied the 2010 International Conference of Participatory Design for which she was Art Chair; Mirror States, a major exhibition of interactive installations, curated with Kathy Cleland (Campbelltown Art Gallery, Sydney and MIC Toi Rerehiko, Auckland, 2008). In 2008 Lizzie was curator and co-director (with George Khut) of the year-long interdisciplinary research project Thinking Through the Body funded by the Australia Council’s ArtLab. Between 2004-2006 Lizzie was founding curator of Beta_space; a dedicated venue for exhibiting “prototypes” of interactive artworks at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

Fellowships

In 2013 Lizzie was Visiting Fellow at the University of Westminster, London and in 2009 she was Visiting Fellow at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Media.Art.Research, Linz. In 2007 she was researcher in residence at the Daniel Langlois Foundation in Montreal.


My Grants

  • Chief Investigator with the ARC Centre for Excellence in Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH). In this National investigation of Australia's deep time history, LIzzie leads research into the development and impact of the CABAH Art Series. 
  • Chief Investigator (with Prof. Jill Bennett and Prof. Lynn Froggett) of the ARC Linkage project Curating Third Space: The Value of ArtScience Collaboration. Industry partners in the project are The Australia Council; The Museum of Applied Arts and Science, Sydney; Australia’s Science Channel; Foundation for Art and Creative Technology, UK and The ArtScience Museum, Singapore
  • Chief Investigator (with Dr Caroline Langill, OCAD University) on two SSHRC funded research projects: The Living Effect, investigating the notion of “aliveness” in media art objects, and Curating Lively Objects: Postdisciplinary Perspectives on Media Art Exhibition, in partnership with The Banff Centre, Canada. These grants resulted in the exhibition Lively Objects at the Museum of Vancouver (2018), and the edited volume Curating Lively Objects: Exhibitions Beyond Disciplines (2022), published by Routledge Museum Studies Series.

My Research Supervision


Supervision keywords


Areas of supervision

Lizzie specialises in supervising curatorial practice-based post-graduate research. She particularly welcomes proposals from Industry engaged candidates working in interdisciplinary and/or participatory contexts. In 2014 she convened the symposium Knowing Through Showing: Conversations on Curatorial Knowledge, that featured post-doctoral students in curatorial practice across UNSW Art and Design. In 2016 she initiated with Dr Blair French the Museum of Contemporary Art / UNSW Curatorial PHD Scholarship.

Completed research supervision projects:  

Anneke Jaspers (PhD) (MCA Curatorial Scholar) - Beyond Possession: Rethinking Collections in the Contemporary Art Museum (2022)

Abigail Moncrief (MFA) – New Conversations: Socially engaged art in regional Australian communities (2020)

Kimberley Warren (MPhil) – A Creative Industries Entrepreneurship Toolkit: Producing participatory media arts platforms (2019)

Bec Dean (PhD) - The Artist is Patient: Collaborative Biomedical Art and Curatorial Care (2018)

Vanessa Bartlett (PhD) - Psychologies Of Interaction: Digital Art and Mental Health (2018). 


Currently supervising

Jasmin Stephens (Scientia PhD) - A curatorial approach to cultural data sharing across the Sydney Culture Network 

Lizzie Crouch (PhD) - How do interdisciplinary approaches to engagement with science (specifically art-science collaborations) enable underserved audiences to be empowered.

Angela Goddard (PhD) - Curatorial Support Structures: How to Cultivate World Shaping Knowledge. 


My Teaching

Lizzie was the inaugural Program Director of the Master of Curating and Cultural Leadership at UNSW Art and Design (2015-2017). Her teaching focuses on contemporary curatorial practice, interdisciplinary approaches to material culture, museum futures and new modes of participatory leadership in the cultural sector. She was co-leader, with Ainslie Murray on the Scientia Education Investment Fund Grant Modelling Worlds exploring the role of models and modelling in teaching and learning in art, architecture and design (2017/2018). 

Current courses include: 

 

 

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Contact

+61 (0)2 8936 0677