10,000 Francs Reward: The Contemporary Art Museum, Dead or Alive (2009)

“What is the museum’s role? What should be its functions and activities in today’s society? What other operational and organizational models could be proposed to help overcome the modernist position by which the museum, as a repository of artistic essences, can make a universal reality visible in an immanent way? To debate these questions, the Association of Contemporary Art Directors of Spain – ADACE – constituted as a forum for reflection and debate, held in Baeza a conference in which those responsible for Spain’s museums reflected, together with their foreign colleagues, as well as artists and thinkers, on these matters in an idea-sharing session. The results of this meeting are published in this book.”

Interventions by Manuel Asensi, Mieke Bal, John Beverley, Manuel Borja-Villel, Benjamin Buchloh, Gustavo Buntinx, Jean-François Chevrier, Nuria Enguita Mayo, Javier González de Durana, Beatriz Herráez, Paulo Herkenhoff, Martin Jay, Ana Longoni, Ute Meta Bauer, Simón Marchán, Antoni Muntadas, Juan de Nieves, Martha Rosler, Suely Rolnik, Yolanda Romero, René Schérer, Allan Sekula, Teresa Velázquez, and Santos Zunzunegui.

Edited by Cesar Antonio Molina, Manuel Borja-Villel, Yolanda Romero, et al.
Publisher ADACE (Asociación de Directores de Arte Contemporáneo de España), 2009
ISBN 9788479930745, 8479930748
251 pages

Conference
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF, PDF

L’Internationale (ed.): Decolonising Museums (2015)

“Decolonising Museums addresses colonial legacies and mindsets, which are still so rooted and present today in the museum institutions in Europe and beyond. The publication draws from the conference Decolonising the Museum which took place at MACBA in Barcelona, 27-29 November 2014, and offers new essays, responding to texts published on the online platform earlier this year.

In different geopolitical regions, there have been various degrees of work to reconsider the colonial past ever since the 1960s, the painstaking process of decolonisation and the institutionalisation of multiculturalism. Scrutinising the complex European context, one can talk about belated processes taking place in France, Belgium and Holland, the generational divides in the discussion around ‘identity politics’ and the obvious dichotomies between the South and the North. Especially in times when dealing with waves of refugees struggling for their lives has become one of the most urgent civic and individual responsibilities in Europe. Calling upon cultural memory and half-gone history seems to be of utmost importance to oppose the often politically-guided amnesia and ignorance.” (from the Introduction)

Publisher L’Internationale Online, 2015
Managing editor: Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez
Open access
192 pages

Publisher

PDF, PDF (13 MB)
EPUB, EPUB (12 MB)

Claire Bishop: Radical Museology, or, What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? (2013)

“The future of the public museum, able to represent the interests of the ninety-nine percent rather than to consolidate private privilege, has never seemed bleaker. Or has it?

In the face of austerity cuts to public funding, a handful of museums of contemporary art have devised compelling alternatives to the mantra of bigger is better and richer. Radical Museology presents the collection displays of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Museo Nacional de Reina Sofía in Madrid and MSUM in Ljubljana as outlines of a new understanding of the contemporary in contemporary art.

Radical Museology is a vivid manifesto for the contemporary as a method rather than a periodization, and for the importance of a politicized representation of history in museums of contemporary art.” (from the back cover)

With drawings by Dan Perjovschi
Publisher Koenig Books, London, 2013
ISBN 3863353641, 9783863353643
79 pages
via Claire Bishop

Reviews: Sanne Kofod Olsen (Kunstkritikk, 2014), Axel Gryspeerdt (Questions de communication, 2021, FR).

WorldCat

PDF (2-up)
PDF (1-up, updated on 2020-1-16)
Academia.edu