NETWORKS
The networked projects the Van Abbemuseum engages in transcend both artistic and geographical boundaries. This page presents an up to date, transparent overview of the projects that are being developed in collaboration with partners both in the Netherlands and abroad. They are not a part of the regular programme but amount to an extension of the possibilities that exist within the museum.
The projects deal with important changes in contemporary art and consciously link with history, the community and the ensuing sensitivities.
A consciousness of this context, the collective collaboration and the interchange of knowledge form the basis of these networks. However, the form of these networks and the projects that are developed are not predetermined but must spring from a necessity. With projects that range from making exhibitions to organizing lecture series' to publishing relevant articles or books, these networks attempt to engage in an active connection with their environment and to clarify their relevance.
SMART Museum Chicago
Located on the University of Chicago's Hyde Park campus, the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art houses a permanent collection of over 10,000 objects, spanning five millennia of both Western and Eastern civilizations. The scope of its permanent collections, combined with groundbreaking special exhibitions, a focus on research and teaching by University of Chicago scholars, and distinguished outreach and educational programs geared to both adults and school age children, make the Smart one of the Midwest's most dynamic and innovative educational institutions in the visual arts.
Mission Statement
As the art museum of the University of Chicago, the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art promotes the understanding of the visual arts and their importance to cultural and intellectual history through direct experiences with original works of art and through an interdisciplinary approach to its collections, exhibitions, publications, and programs. These activities support life-long learning among a range of audiences including the University and the broader community.
More info on the website of the Smart Museum.
Comité van Roosendaal
The Comité van Roosendaal is a network connecting contemporary art institutions in the Northern European capital region. The Comité originated in 2006 as an informal discussion forum for subjects of mutual interest and urgency. In 2008, the Comité van Roosendaal formalised its status as an association in order to bring together, discuss, evaluate and further inspire the members’ knowledge and institutional practices. The members aim to broaden their insights in artistic, cultural and political matters and seek means to share these with other colleagues in the global cultural field.
The Comité van Roosendaal brings together diverse institutions and people who are engaged with the research, production, presentation, discussion and memory of contemporary culture. It has a specific focus on the discursive aspects of contemporary art. The Comité’s membership is not based on representative criteria, but has developed organically from a shared sphere of interests*. It has thus evolved into a platform where a multitude of individuals discuss with one another their respective intentions to stimulate intellectual and artistic creativity.
The members of the Comité van Roosendaal are centred in the densely populated and concentrated economic zone spanning Amsterdam, Luxembourg, Brussels and Cologne, that forms the heartland of North-Western Europe. This region has a complex polycentric structure, which in spite of its strong urbanisation (the area holds almost 10 percent of the European population) possesses no dominant metropolitan city. Rather, a federal polyphony has become the norm offering many possibilities for exchange and development. This region is undoubtedly of global economic importance, even given its political divisions and a new understanding of its own connectivity can set cultural and political discussion and activity in motion at various national and regional levels.
The existing platform of exchange within the Comité van Roosendaal has already led to various ambitious collaborative projects and the association will continue to facilitate such bi- or multilateral projects. However, the main focus of the Comité van Roosendaal will now be on the development of strategic synergies over a number of key areas — research, education, public communication, collecting, publishing and cultural politics.
The members of the Comité van Roosendaal meet regularly in expert meetings, occasionally inviting authorities from various related fields, to discuss matters of institutional art practice. The Comité’s practical intentions and recommendations are disclosed by means of best practice examples, advisory documents and policy statements. Although developed through the structure of expert meetings, the Comité seeks to communicate with a broad public and its activities are publicised mainly through its website and a regular newsletter, with a goal to contribute to the understanding of art and put cultural organisations at the intersection of art, culture and society.
The Comité seeks an exchange of ideas with the political arena and the media and will occasionally host meetings with politicians, journalists, critics and sociologists as well as engage and exchange with colleagues from other parts of this region.
*Extension of the committee takes place by mutual agreement and on initiative of the committee.
Legal Notice | © Comité van Roosendaal 2008 - All rights reserved.
Museum as Hub in New York
- Image courtesy of the New Museum, New York.
A partnership of five international arts organisations, Museum as Hub is a new model for curatorial practice and institutional collaboration established to enhance our understanding of contemporary art. Both a network of relationships and an actual physical location on the fifth floor of the New Museum Education Center (NYC), Museum as Hub is conceived as a flexible, social space designed to engage audiences through multimedia workstations, exhibition areas, screenings, symposia, and events. Initiated by the New Museum in 2006, this partnership includes Insa Art Space, (Seoul, South Korea); Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo; Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art (Cairo, Egypt); and Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, The Netherlands).
If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution
If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, a rolling curatorial platform curated by Frederique Bergholtz and Annie Fletcher (Curator Exhibitions, Van Abbemuseum), launches its new third edition. The departure point for this edition is to explore a conceptual framework of the masquerade.
This can be read in the light of If I Can't Dance...'s continuing exploration of paradigms such as performativity, theatricality and feminism(s), produced together with artists in the form of experimental sketches, performances, readings, exhibitions, enactments etc., since its inception in 2005.Over the next two years, If I Can’t Dance… will have manifestations in Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Bilbao, Dublin and Eindhoven, collaborating with Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, de Appel arts centre, Sala Rekalde, Project Arts Centre and the Van Abbemuseum. Keren Cytter, Jon Mikel Euba, Olivier Foulon, Suchan Kinoshita, Joachim Koester and Sarah Pierce are invited to produce new projects that will be developed within the time frame of the nexttwo years, and presented at the subsequent moments when If I Can’t Dance… will visit the institutions mentioned.
SYMPOSIUM RUSSIAN AVANT-GARDE REVISITED
L'Internationale
L'Internationale is a new, long-term collaboration between four European museums and archives. The intention of this transinstitutional organisation is to use the collections and archives of the various organisations collectively to challenge the usual master narratives of art and investigate local to local comparisons and differences. In place of the global, hegemonic ambitions of the largest contemporary art institutions, L'internationale proposes collaboration between museums, each with its specific collection focus and history, as a way to instigate transnational, cultural narratives in plural.
The founding partners of L'Internationale are the Moderna galerija, Ljubljana; the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and the Július Koller Society, Bratislava. Each institution has shown through previous projects that they are repeatedly concerned to negotiate different forms of local knowledge and experience with the central art historical narrative written in one or two western political/economic capitals. This initiative will enable us more effectively to connect our own stories together in new rhizomatic ways and to reconsider internationalism and translocalism as more sensitive measures of art and its relation to society.
The concrete aims of L'Internationale are to develop common platforms and methodologies for presentation, education and research dealing with the full range of museological fields including collections, archives, publications, public mediation and conservation. The plan anticipates a long term cooperation that will concentrate on replacing the institutional spectacle with a sense of persistent presence and would offer our publics regular connections between each specific context.
BAK Utrecht
An important partner for the Van Abbemuseum is BAK Utrecht. previous collaborations were the retrospective show on Sanja Ivekovic and Citizens and Subjects. Currently in development is the ellaborate researchprogramme Former West.
BAK, basis voor actuele kunst is a platform dedicated to thinking, researching, producing, presenting, and analyzing contemporary art. In its process of becoming, marking a trajectory from a spontaneous artists’ initiative established in 1989, to today’s contemporary art institute, BAK has served as an advocate for contemporary art. The philosophy of BAK is to make the art of our own time, and its developments towards tomorrow, accessible.
It is the combination of the professional dedication of its people, and a middle-field, flexible operation that makes BAK a distinct place. Our committed team of individuals with different expertise identifies issues for artistic and intellectual analysis, invites art professionals for collaborations, and offers personal involvement and engagement.
The activities of BAK are concentrated in three main areas: research/creative production, presenting, and analyzing.
The area of research and creative production functions both as an extended artist’s studio, and as a space for gathering valuable data and support resources for contemporary art curators, writers, and theorists. BAK initiates partnerships and collaborations with contemporary artists, theorists, writers, curators, and other institutions, who are offered professional support – both in intellectual terms, as well as in relation to production. All the activities of people at BAK, as well as its resources, are then synchronized towards each projects’ needs.
Presentation is a public moment in the development of every project. It can realize itself in various formats accommodating the character of a project. Here BAK functions in the true meaning of its name - basis – as a support structure, flexible enough to sustain diverse activities such as exhibitions, workshops, publications, etc.
In an effort to stimulate discourse on contemporary art, BAK devotes a significant part of its work to the area of intellectual analysis related to its projects, as well as to developments in art and society in general. Various public and semi-public encounters in form of lectures, conversations, symposia, or workshops are being organized, for which BAK attracts a large number of respective practitioners on national and international levels.
BAK provides a basis, which attempts to accommodate various aspects of complex socio-political situations in the contemporary world, and seeks out their artistic re-articulations. One could see BAK as a meeting point for various voices about the everyday; should reality fail to provide enough vision towards the future, BAK tries to create a mental space for examining the potential of art to conceive the world otherwise.
Maria Hlavajova, artistic director
23 February 2003
More info on the website of BAK.
Afterall
Afterall is a research and publishing organisation based in London and Los Angeles, of which Charles Esche (director, Van Abbemuseum) is a co-editor and co-founder.
Initiated in 1998, Afterall Journal offers surprising, thoughtful and in-depth analysis of artists' work, contextualised by juxtaposing essays. The journal focuses on contemporary art, always considering its relation to different artistic, social and political situations. Afterall is co-published by Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London and the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, in collaboration with MuHKA, Antwerp.
In April, 2006 Afterall Books was introduced by Central Saint Martins as a complement to the journal's research project. Maintaining the project’s main focus on the work of art and its impact in the wider world, Afterall Books publishes three different series. The first, Afterall Readers, is a collection of survey publications, looking at significant areas of modern and contemporary art practice through the commissioning or reprinting of key texts. Another, The One Work series, is a library of compact books, uniformly designed,which frame one important work of contemporary art using a single text. The third series, focusing on key historical shows and entitled One Exhibition, will be launched in 2009 in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.
Afterall Online features specially commissioned material designed to be both more timeous and idiosyncratic than the journal. Regularly updated content includes reviews from Los Angeles, London and elsewhere, as well as interviews with artists about their art practice, occasional longer essays on theoretical and philosophical topics and artist's projects.
Onomatopee
Publisher and presentation space.
Two friends, Freek Lomme, curator (guest curator your-space), writer (editor of De Kantlijn) and poet and Remco van Bladel, graphic designer and musician, founded Onomatopee in 2006; since February 2008 they've got a gallery space of their own, available at all times as operating base where from they target the multitude. They define Onomatopee as a 'production label'; their modus operandi lies somewhere in between a commercial gallery and an artist run space; in between a commercial publisher and an underground record label.
Editions and issues, that's what Onomatopee is involved with; specializing in poetry, typography, sound art and dedicated to site-specific, contextual projects of which many deal with critical notions on design. Every edition comes with some kind of presentation/exhibition and vice versa. They both produce and artistically manage their projects; they are open to collaborate with other people and organisations, in their own gallery space or elsewhere.
Top performers are made not born
made has been created for talented professionals who occupy key positions in companies and institutions in and around Eindhoven. The members of made come together six times per annum in a context of art, music and design. They form a varied network, a community of inspiration and talent.
made (music art design experiences) is an initiative of Muziekcentrum Frits Philips and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven’s two leading cultural institutions who have joined forces for this purpose.
made was established, firstly, to give professionals from companies and other organizations opportunities to develop their talents in inspiring surroundings. Secondly, it supports young, talented musicians and artists on their way to the top of their fields.
You will find out about what made membership implies for a company, and why it is so worthwhile to participate, on www.madefortalent.nl.