Salvage Art Institute: No Longer Art

Drawn from the art insurance lexicon, the term “salvage art” refers to works removed from art circulation due to accidental damage. Salvage art pieces are subject to a peculiar and transformative actuarial logic. Once “total loss” status has been declared and indemnification has been paid, salvage art is considered officially devoid of value. Its objects are cast into art’s netherworld—no longer alive for the market, gallery, or museum system, but often still relatively intact. Salvage art is liberated from the burden of constant valuation and the obligation of exchange, yet most often abandoned to the invisibility of perpetual storage.

The Salvage Art Institute supplies a refuge and a renewed visibility for salvage art pieces. It offers a platform for exposing, viewing, and encountering the condition of salvage art and provides a forum for confronting the regulation of its financial, aesthetic, and social value.

In spring 2012 the institute accepted a gift of its first salvage art inventory. This inventory comprises the core of the exhibition No longer art: Salvage Art Institute. The Salvage Art Institute’s mandate is to maintain the separation of value from its no longer art inventory. No Longer Art: Salvage Art Institute follows this objective, simultaneously opening the inventory to scrutiny while attempting to suspend the force of attraction between the inventory and its value.

Conceived by Elka Krajewska and Mark Wasiuta and produced by GSAPP exhibitions (Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation) and SAI (Salvage Art Institute), No Longer Art: Salvage Art Institute was first shown at the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery in New York in 2012. The exhibition at MAZ (Museo de Arte de Zapopan), Guadalajara, Mexico is the first exhibition of the entire SAI inventory.