Museum Show Part 1

This event has already taken place and ended on 19 Nov 2011

Museum Show Part 1

24 Sep - 19 Nov 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 & Christopher 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), A History of Art in the Arab World: Part 1_Chapter One_Section 139: The Atlas Group (Walid Raad), Museum of Ordure, Nasubi Gallery (Tsuyoshi Ozawa), Blackout Leica Museum (Sarkis), "I founded a fictitious museum in New York in '68 and collected 1,000,000 minutes of attention to show", (James Lee Byars), Museum of Failure (Ellen Harvey), From the Freud Museum, (Susan Hiller)...

One of the most curious tendencies in modern and contemporary art has been that of museums created by artists. Museum Show is a large-scale exhibition - a museum of museums - displaying this comprehensive selection of highly idiosyncratic, semi-fictional institutions. Presented at Arnolfini in two chapters, it is the first exhibition to chart this particular tendency in modern and contemporary art.

Artists continue consistently to invent their own institutions. The reasons for practitioners deciding to work in this way have varied greatly between artists - from critique directed specifically towards institutions of art, to more contemporary examples that focus their attention towards wider social and political realms of cultural hegemony.

Across its two chapters, Museum Show will present museums by approximately 40 artists from across the spectrum of career status, canonical to emerging, and from around the globe. The exhibition presents ‘museums' that employ a classic ‘museological' approach, including Marcel Broodthaers' seminal Musée d'Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles or 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 the Museum of Ordure, or the utopia of Museo Aero Solar - a floating museum made of thousands of recycled carrier bags.

Works from Museum Show Part 1 are also presented at a number of other locations in Bristol. Marko Lulic's Museum of Revolution can be found on top of the M Shed across the harbour from Arnolfini, and the World Agriculture Museum is presented at the former Bridewell Police Station. Museo Aero Solar was presented as a mass-participatory event in Hengrove Park, Bristol in early October. For a map please click here.

Exhibition Guides:

Museum Show is supported by:

Acción Cultural Española
Austrian Cultural Forum
Bristol City Council
Canada House Arts Trust
City of Bristol College
Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
Fantastic Fireworks
Institut Francais du Royaume-Uni
Mondriaan Foundation
OCA
Oxford Exhibition Services
SACO Serviced apartments
The Derek Hill Foundation
The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation
The Henry Moore Foundation
The Japan Foundation
The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
The Flemish Community
Flanders Image
BNP Paribas Real Estate

Thanks to:

Mr T Van
The Island

Perspective