Arnolfini Presents Museum Show Part 2
Arnolfini presents Museum Show Part 2 on view through 19 February 2012.
Arnolfini, Photo: Jamie Woodley
Following on from Part 1 (24 September – 19 November) Museum Show Part 2 is the second chapter of Arnolfini’s Museum Show, a major historical survey of museums created by artists. Museum Show presents a comprehensive selection of these highly idiosyncratic, semi-fictional institutions – a museum of museums perhaps. It is the first ever exhibition to chart this particular tendency in contemporary art.
Museum Show across its two chapters 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.
Museum Show Part 2 is an ambitious series of installations, including The Museum of American Art, charting the dominance of American art and ideologies from the 50s and 60s in Europe, whereas Khalil Rabah’s Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind reconsiders the “ethnographic” framings of non-Western cultures in museums. The Museo Salinas by Vicente features a baroque and delirious collection of Mexican memorabilia — plastic toys, piñatas, masks, stickers, clothing, and other items — related to the controversial image of Mexico’s ex-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, derided for his corruption.
Museum Show Part 2 is also the final exhibition as part of Arnolfini’s 50th anniversary programme. As part of this year-long 50th anniversary programme, Arnolfini has worked with the research theme of The Apparatus, reflecting on the conditions of the art system today.
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