Associate Professor Lizzie Muller
Lizzie Mulleris a curator and researcher specialising in audience experience and interdisciplinary collaboration. She researchesthe future of museums as sites of knowledge production, and the relationship between curatorial practice and changingdisciplinary structures.Her internationalexhibitions celebrate theintersection of art, science and technology. Lizzie is an elected Councillor of the , and co-founder with Keir Winesmith of the bi-monthly .
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 2018/19Lizzie co-curated the exhibition with Katie Dyer at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The show includes four commissions that speculate onhuman futuresthrough 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:
In 2017/18Lizzie co-curated (with Holly Williams) – an exhibition exploring the role of models in creating and sharing knowledge across all disciplines. The exhibition was staged inUNSW 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 Artcurated 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 projectfunded 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.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
- Chief Investigator with the (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, andCurating Lively Objects: Postdisciplinary Perspectives on Media Art Exhibition,in partnership with The Banff Centre, Canada. Thesegrants resulted in the exhibition Lively Objects at the Museum of Vancouver (2018), and the edited volumeCurating Lively Objects: Exhibitions Beyond Disciplines (2022), published byRoutledge Museum Studies Series.
My Research Supervision
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 at UNSW Art and Design (2015-2017). Her teaching focuses on contemporary curatorial practice, interdisciplinary approaches to material culture, museum futuresand new modes of participatory leadership in the cultural sector. She wasco-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: