Primary Sources at Work: Galeries-anti-Galeries
July 1–10, 2020
The Bibliothèque Kandinsky’s Summer University is a Musée National d’Art Moderne/Centre Pompidou research program installed on the very premises of the museum. It focuses on modern and contemporary art primary sources: archives, documentary materials, as well as new forms of artistic appropriation. Interdisciplinary in format, the Summer University brings together young researchers: historians, art historians, anthropologists, sociologists, artists, critics and curators who share a collective reflection with art professionals and various scholars around primary source materials. Several writing workshops will rhythm the program, as well as visits to various documentary collections. Editorial work is at the heart of the Summer University: a new issue of the Journal de l’Université d’été de la Bibliothèque Kandinsky will be released at the end of the session.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Robert Barry initiated a series of conceptual works famously related to Herbert Marcuse and critically addressing the nature of art galleries as sites of both artistic and intellectual production. Echoing the permanent collection of the Musée national d’art moderne dedicated this year to the 20th century art gallerists, the 7th edition of Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University will question the different twists and turns of the “art gallery” canon. Working across primary sources, it will investigate recent phenomena of galleries and alternative commercial spaces for art and exhibition and implicitly the economic operations they drive.
Histories of taste, logics of collecting, sale-systems, alternative platforms of distribution and exchange, network construction, institutional and counter-institutional changes, this new edition will interrogate alternative economies of artistic practices at stake in contemporary structures, as well as their impact placed at a geostrategic level. From Mexico to Istanbul, from Stockholm to Singapore by a detour to Johannesburg, new economic forms of exchange are invented.
The word “alternative” covers a wide range of meanings. The paper proposals are expected to address the multiplicity of formats and spaces as well as of the promoting figures and players: artist-run spaces, apartment galleries, self-managed alternative venues, reinventing and redistributing practices; bookshop-galleries, ephemeral sites and projects, Internet networks, collaborative and community-based spaces. Case studies focused on the “anti-gallery” profile can coexist with studies on precursory, historical genealogies.
Interrogating primary sources, the 2020 Bibliothèque Kandinsky Summer University will go back to artistic initiatives that have lastingly transgressed the canon of art gallery starting with the 1990s until the present days and that have provoked new modes of creation, representation and distribution of art.
Application procedure
The Bibliothèque Kandinsky’s Summer University is aimed at young fellows (PhD candidates, PhDs, PostDocs): historians, art historians, anthropologists, sociologists, curators, librarians, graphic designers and artists at large.
Application file:
–written proposal (4,500 characters/700 words) either in English or in French, in PDF format.
–CV which should clearly assess the candidate’s language proficiency.
In order to apply is important to have a good command in both English and French. Candidates are expected to bring along a selection of sources used in their research.
The proposal dossier will be sent to: bibliotheque.kandinsky [at] centrepompidou.fr by March 8, 2020.
The proposals will be evaluated by a scientific committee, in charge of drawing up the final Summer University program. The Committee will retain 25 projects.
All applicants, whether selected or not, will be personally contacted before March 16, 2020.
A participation of EUR 150 will be required from each participant, who will be provided with tuition. The participation will cover transportation on site and institutional entries.
Scientific Commitee: Gallien Déjean, art historian, curator, Ecole nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy / Mica Gherghescu, historienne de l’art, Bibliothèque Kandinsky / Céline Heytens, archivist, contemporary holdings, Bibliothèque Kandinsky / Dominique Liquois, reference librarian documentary and scientific watch, Bibliothèque Kandinsky / Yekhan Pinarligil, archivist, contemporary holdings, Bibliothèque Kandinsky / Didier Schulmann, conservateur, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris
For any inquiry, please write to: bibliotheque.kandinsky [at] centrepompidou.fr / T +33 (0)1 44 78 46 65
Please find the entire call here.
