The lecture “About the meetings of the contemporary art and the ancient art, or what else may happen in the museum space” is dedicated to contemporary artistic activity where the subject, the place or the medium is a museum.
Museums are institutions holding and assembling collections of culture, art and other objects in the field of science and technology. Their task is to serve the society and its development, they are institutions that are publicly available, conduct research on the material testimonies of human activity and human surroundings, collect them, preserve and protect, make available and exhibit them, conduct educational activities and serve entertainment purposes. Due to their status and nature, however, museums are subject to a number of rules defining not only the way they operate, but also the presence of the audience. […]
During the lecture, three groups of works will be presented. The first one is artists’ actions, the aim of which is to extract from the museum structure (as an institution and collection) the neglected threads and elements that are forgotten or not obvious. In the second group there are works and actions (initiated by the curators), attempting to connect the old art with the contemporary one, “stitching” together works belonging to completely different narrative orders. The third group concerns artists’ search for such methods and strategies that would create a living situation in which all phenomena: actions, gestures, objects, space, spectators etc. will lead to a positive conflict and at the same time provoke the emotional involvement of the viewer (art as the situation).
Examples on the basis of which I will discus various issues mainly focusing on meaning and context of a museum, the role attributed to it as well as the presence and the role the audience plays in that structure are, among others, exhibitions presented in the Archdiocese Museum in Poznan, Museum of the History of the City of Łódź, the Adam Mickiewicz Museum in Śmiełów or Ziemia Lubuska Museum in Zielona Gora. Among the artists creating works based on the context and significance of the museum we will find Wojciech Gilewicz, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Izabelle Gustowska, Liliana Piskorska and Roland Schefferski.
Małgorzata Jankowska
Dr. Małgorzata Jankowska – historian of art and curator. Assistant professor at the Unit of History of Modern Art at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. Member of AICA and the Polish Institute of World Art Studies. Author of publications and critical texts