Curatoring / exhibition practices & history / museology / scenography

The sixth volume of the “Archives” series, which is dedicated to landmark exhibitions and curatorial practices, brings together two films by Belgian filmmaker Jef Cornelis on the opening of the Castello di Rivoli in 1985, whose inaugural exhibition was conceived by curator Rudi Fuchs, and the 1987 edition of Skulptur Projekte Münster, organized by Kasper König and Klaus Bussmann.

Catalogue documenting the project for the restructuring of the Besançon Museum of Fine Arts and Archeology by Architectures Adelfo Scaranello.

Simon Boudvin brings a narrative but also political depth to the architectural project of building the new museum of folklore in Mouscon.

Collection of essays by Nicolas Bourriaud on the protean, poetic and Rabelaisian Swedish artist Erik Dietman.

This reader addresses the concept of “contemporaneity”, the temporal complexity that follows from the coming together of different temporalities in the same present. It asks how these temporal qualities can be made known in the context of contemporary art research and particularly through practices that involve exhibitionary forms.

Based on a set of mostly unpublished archives, this book focuses on the role played by art dealers at the turn of the last century in the definition, promotion and circulation of African objects as artworks, in Europe and the United States.

This scholarly publication discusses the historical development of the Kunsthalle Bern and its implications for the “localization” of art. It contributes to current research on institutional histories by looking at the many ways in which the Kunsthalle Bern addresses the question of how exhibitionary practices take place.

Why has there been so much interest in “surplus value” in recent years? In “The Outside Can't Go Outside”, artist Merlin Carpenter considers how this term has been inserted into contemporary art theory following the financial crisis of 2007/8.

The first volume of the retrospective catalogue of Le Consortium contemporary art center (new edition).

A collection of texts about time and artists working with it.

A collection of texts about space and artists working with it.

Box set including a book and a film on DVD dedicated to the Theatergarden Bestiarium exhibition.

The first publication to pay tribute to Ambroise Vollard the Reunionese and to the exceptional gift made to his island in 1947, exhibited at the Léon Dierx museum.

The review of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Grand-Hornu (MAC's) inaugurates its new formula with the theme of the museum and its criticism by artists. This issue showcases a selection of contemporary and international artistic projects reflecting on the concept of museum. With artists Yto Barrada, Christoph Büchel, Jacques Charlier, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Tamar Guimarães, Jompet Kuswidananto, Wesley Meuris, Rei Naito, Ryue Nishizawa, Noah Purifoy, Dayanita Singh, Fiona Tan, and Fred Wilson.

A compendium of essays, scripts, poems, and proposals compiled by the anonymous collective Studio for Propositional Cinema for their eponymous show at the Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover. It investigates notions of script and staging in exhibition display. It features reknowned contributors such as Paul Chan, Keren Cytter, Irena Haiduk, John Miller, Cally Spooner, Lawrence Weiner et Christopher Williams.

A collection of new writing and curatorial projects stemming from the activities of the Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark, from 2013 to 2014. These projects reflected on the conditions for making curatorial “events” that are extended over longer durations to connect their constituent elements—exhibitions, texts, projects—across space and time.

A collection of textual and visual essays stemming from a series of lecture-performances in which artists and curators experimented with various strategies of reprise in the fields of publishing, visual arts, animation, new technologies and the law.

Special issue dedicated to the relationship between and mutual influence of exhibition display and contemporary art practices. A pool of guest contributors—including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Mario García Torres, Simon Starling, Jens Hoffmann, Kim West, Liam Gillick, Gabriel Sierra, Morgan Fisher, Willem De Rooij, Céline Condorelli, and more—were invited to select illuminating cases of cross-pollination, and to compile extended captions for their chosen images.

A timeless photographic ballad, through a few shots taken in the archeology museum in Athens.

Publication based on the eponymous film by Etienne Chambaud and Vincent Normand in which the authors develop the concept of the “Decapitated Museum.” The voice-over in the film has been made into a one-edition book, which was rephotographed according to the technique the authors used to make the film. The outcome is a photography book that is as much a text document than an imaginary scene.

The sixth volume of Rémy Zaugg's complete writings (1982-1993): featuring some of the most influential texts written by the Swiss artist on art museum.

The seventh volume of Rémy Zaugg's complete writings (1984-2004): the publication brings together texts that formulate a practice and a criticism of exhibition that goes beyond genres and mediums, using concrete projects in given architectonic situations.

The heighth volume of Rémy Zaugg's complete writings (1988-1989): a portrait of Jean-Christophe Ammann.

The ninth volume of Rémy Zaugg's complete writings (1986-2005): a reflection on the artist's projects for public spaces, illustrated with personal statements and sketches.

Merlin Carpenter investigates the status of the midcareer artist with a conceptual project involving the exhibition of transit blankets. The publication documents these works and related gallery shows, in addition with texts by Kunsthalle Bern director Valérie Knoll and artist Sam Lewitt.

This publication documents a work by David Horvitz made on the occasion of a Bas Jan Ader-themed exhibition in Holland in 2012. Annoyed by the curators, Horvitz literally disappeared one month before the show, leaving all his belongings and quitting social media. He returned on the exhibition's closing day, and explained his piece to the curators.

Study book made by artist George Trakas in response to a commission issued by inhabitants of the Lamelouze commune in the southern French region of Gard, north of Alès (as part of the “New Patrons” program, initiated and supported by the Fondation de France).

Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo in Madrid invited Oriol Vilanova to intervene in the center's collection of graphic works. Developing its reflections on the modalities of exhibitions, Vilanova collected and exhibited empty window cases from Madrid's museums.

Artistic practices in New York's alternative art spaces (1969-1985).

Publication documenting an interactive installation by Samuel Bianchini commissioned by the Maison du geste et de l'image in Paris as part of the “New Patrons” program.

This publication extensively documents the exhibitions and activities of M/2, a local but emblematic example of an artist-run space founded at the end of the 1980s in Vevey, Switzerland.

Helke Bayrle has—on her own initiative—filmed the installations of exhibitions that have been held at Portikus since the end of 1992. This catalogue features more than 1,000 film stills, a full index of the recorded exhibitions, as well as texts by curators and deans who worked at Städelschule and Portikus over the years.

Since 2008, Walead Beshty photographs the art people he works with at every stage of his projects. This first volume features a gallery of black and white portraits spanning from 2008 to 2012.

Drawing on examples from France and the United States, this publication offers a multidisciplinary reflection on a new type of engagement of art in democracy, renewing relationships between creation, culture and society (adaptated from a French publication on the New Patrons's activities, updated with contributions from the Anglo-American intellectual scene).

A story of the Grévin wax museum in Paris from 1881 to 1921.

This book is the first compilation of the history of the Mamco; it offers a diachronic path through the institution's first 22 years of existence, from its foundation in 1994 up to 2016, and presents some one hundred exhibitions via illustrations, as well as a brief introductory text describing the characteristics and formats of the shows, and some of traces they have left in the collection.

A collective survey on the current conditions of art and culture in Central and Eastern Europe.

This book is the first compilation of the history of the Mamco; it offers a diachronic path through the institution's first 22 years of existence, from its foundation in 1994 up to 2016, and presents some one hundred exhibitions via illustrations, as well as a brief introductory text describing the characteristics and formats of the shows, and some of traces they have left in the collection (also available in English).

The museum of contemporary art in all its paradoxical characteristics.

Filmed inside a series of empty museum galleries across Paris, Ali Cherri's Somniculus articulates the tension between the lives of dead objects and the living world that surrounds them—thus highlighting their ideological value. This publication accompanies and complete the Lebanese artist's video project.

The 63rd edition of the Jahresring series—one of the longest continually published annual journals for contemporary art in Germany—focuses on the practice of curating in Southeast Asia, a region experiencing a time of increased global visibility as well as nation and institution building.

Future Imperfect critically examines the role played by cultural institutions in producing present-day and future contexts for the production, dissemination, and reception of contemporary art in the Middle East and North Africa.

Hubs and Fictions, originally a touring forum, invited international curators, writers, and producers to probe how fiction plays out in a globally distributed art-world ecology, and how infrastructures are invented against its background. This unconventional reader gathers documents, negotiations, and reflections from and on these conversations.

Documentation around 17 commissioned artworks set in middle schools, as part of the Percent for Art Program established in the French Department of Seine-Saint-Denis.

Expanding its mapping of landmark exhibitions and curatorial history from the 1960s to today, the “Archives” series dedicates its fifth DVD to Sonsbeek, an art manifestation held in 1971 and 1986 in and around Arnhem (Netherlands). Mainly showcasing large installations and sculptures in natural surroundings, these two events are crucial to the history of outdoor exhibitions, shifting the boundaries of traditional sculpture.

Creating Bob: a food truck with a living, warm and hospitable public purpose, set close to Lille-Europe Train Station and commissioned as part of the “New Patrons” program.

Reflecting upon the necessary conditions for the development of the New Patrons Protocol, the French conceptual artist calls for a better involvement of museums as well as for an art history that would relate creative processes with political conditions.