Summary: Part 6: Andrew Renton - Deposits and withdrawals at the ‘collective memory bank’: ceramic artists and the National Museum of Wales. <br> <br> This one-day symposium recorded at the Anna Freud Centre on 26 January 2013 was timed to accompany the exhibition DreamWork by artist and researcher Christie Brown. It considered the relationship between ceramic art practice and museum collections within the broader context of contemporary visual culture. The symposium address key areas of inspiration for artists within this context, by focussing on the dialogue between the concept, the collection and the specific nature of the site. Papers will feature a subjective response to Freud’s archaic figurative collection, the uncanny notion of the inner life in inanimate objects and the private house as museum, broadening out to raise curatorial and theoretical questions around the nature of this art practice within post modern culture and ideology. <br> <br> The symposium forms part of the research project Ceramics in the Expanded Field (<a href="http://www.ceramics-in-the-expanded-field.com/">www.ceramics-in-the-expanded-field.com</a>) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council through the University of Westminster in London. Researchers Christie Brown, Julian Stair and Clare Twomey and PhD student Laura Breen form the team for this project and the exhibition DreamWork is a key element in the dissemination of the outcomes. The major objective of the project is to investigate the ways in which contemporary ceramic artists have used ceramic practice to initiate new ways of working and new dialogues within the context of museums. <br> <br> Speaker Biographies & Abstracts <br> <br> Andrew Renton is Head of Applied Art at Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. Since joining the Museum in 1999, he has emphasised the development of the Museum’s collection of contemporary applied art, seeking to work with artists and to use collections creatively as part of an active and ambitious acquisition strategy. He has curated exhibitions at the National Museum in Cardiff in collaboration with Edmund de Waal (Arcanum: mapping European porcelain, 2005) and Elizabeth Fritsch (Dynamic Structures: Painted Vessels by Elizabeth Fritsch, 2010). His other priorities have included research into and acquisitions for the full range of post-mediaeval applied art collections, in particular Welsh ceramics and historic silver. Prior to moving to Cardiff, he worked for six years at National Museums Liverpool as a curator of applied art, including three years at the Lady Lever Art Gallery. <br> <br> Abstract: The first ‘intervention’ by a contemporary ceramic artist at the National Museum of Wales took place a century ago, thanks to Bernard Leach’s close relationship with his uncle who also happened to be the Museum’s founding director. However, it is only in the last two decades that the National Museum has engaged with ceramic artists in a sustained and strategic way. This survey of the Museum’s experience of this engagement will reflect on the interaction between curatorial and artistic practices, on the inspirational role of the Museum and its collections, and on the implications for the profile of contemporary ceramics within the Museum’s multidisciplinary context. <br>
