Museum Show
Museum ShowArnolfini
16 Narrow Quay, Bristol, BS1 4QA, U.K
0044 (0) 117 917 2300
info [at] arnolfini.org.uk
www.arnolfini.org.uk
24 September–19 November 2011
Including:
Museum of Contemporary African Art (Meschac Gaba), La Boîte-en-Valise (Marcel Duchamp), Museo Aero Solar, Museum of Conceptual Art (Tom Marioni), La Galerie Légitime (Robert Filliou), Schubladenmuseum/Museum of Drawers (Herbert Distel), Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals (Bill Burns), Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum (Davis Lisboa), Museum of Projective Personality Testing (Sina Najafi & Jonathan Turner), Museum of Revolution (Marko Lulic), Intuitive Galerie (François Curlet), Moon Museum (Forrest Myers), Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles (Marcel Broodthaers), Museum for Myself (Peter Blake), World Agriculture Museum (Asunción Molinos), Stemhokkenmuseum/Voting Booth Museum (Guillaume Bijl), Nasubi Gallery (Tsuyoshi Ozawa), A History of Art in the Arab World: Part 1_Chapter One. Section 139: The Atlas Group (1989–2004) (Walid Raad), Blackout Leica Museum (Sarkis), Museum of Ordure, From the Freud Museum (Susan Hiller), Museum of Failure (Ellen Harvey), “I founded a fictitious museum in New York in ’68 and collected 1,000,000 minutes of attention to show” (James Lee Byars)…
Museum Show: Part 2
9 December 2011–5 February 2012
Including:
Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (Khalil Rabah), Danger Museum (Øyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu), Museum of American Art, Museum of Non-Participation (Karen Mirza & Brad Butler), Museum of Television Culture (Jaime Davidovich), Victoria and Alferd Museum (Åbäke), Hu Xiangqian’s Museum (Hu Xiangqian), Museum of Forgotten History (Maarten Vanden Eynde), Museum of Incest (Simon Fujiwara).
One of the most curious tendencies in modern and contemporary art has been that of museums created by artists. Museum Show is a historical survey exhibition—or a ‘museum of museums’ perhaps—displaying a comprehensive selection of these highly idiosyncratic, semi-fictional institutions. Presented at Arnolfini in two chapters, it will be the first exhibition to chart this particular tendency in contemporary art.
Museum Show presents museums by approximately 40 artists from across the spectrum of career status, from canonical to emerging, and from around the globe. The exhibition will look at the different interpretations of what a museum can be, whilst charting the methodologies and reasons used by artists for creating their own institutions—ranging historically from critique directed towards institutions of art, to more contemporary examples that focus their attention towards wider social and political realms of cultural hegemony.
The exhibition includes museums that employ a classic ‘museological’ approach, including Marcel Broodthaers’ seminal Musée d’Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles and the absurdity of Bill Burns’ Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals, through to broader, more conceptual understandings of a museum infrastructure, such as Tom Marioni’s Museum of Conceptual Art—a functioning bar and an early example of ‘convivial’ artwork in the US, to the abjection of Museum of Ordure, or the utopia of Museo Aero Solar—a floating museum made of thousands of recycled carrier bags.
The opening of Museum Show Part 1 also marks the landmark occasion of Arnolfini’s 50th anniversary. For this year-long anniversary programme, Arnolfini has worked with the research theme of The Apparatus, reflecting on the conditions of the art system today. The Apparatus is about the ‘makings of’ artists, of artworks, of institutions, and of a cultural infrastructure.
Selected 50th Anniversary Events
Cerith Wyn Evans: Paysage Fautif (Wayward Landscape)
Friday 23 September, 9.30pm
Cerith Wyn Evans fireworks pieces are wooden structures that spell out texts that burn. This text firework piece uses letters written by Marcel Duchamp to his lover.
Hassan Khan
Fri 23 September, 10pm
Party music comes from Cairo-based artist, musician and writer Hassan Khan, performing The Big One (medley). DJ set by Big City Sound Girl.
The Museum of Ordure
Stuart Brisley and Geoff Cox
Saturday 24 September, 12pm–1pm
Performance lecture about the Museum of Ordure.
Neil Cummings Book Launch and Exhibition Tour of his residency project Self Portrait: Arnolfini
Sunday 25 September, 12pm–1pm
Seth Siegelaub in conversation with Teresa Gleadowe
Wednesday 5 October, 6pm
*Image above:
Collection Belvedere, Vienna, Courtesy Belvedere, Vienna; Gabriele Senn Gallery, Vienna, and the artist.
Photograph Copyright: Marko Lulic.
