The Floating Collection

The MAMbo—Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna opens its autumn season of exhibitions with The Floating Collection, a group exhibition born out of the desire to study the collections of the museums in Bologna—the Settore Musei Civici Bologna and other museum systems of the city—through the gaze of six artists: Alex Ayed (Strasbourg, 1989), Rä di Martino (Rome, 1975), Cevdet Erek (Istanbul, 1974), David Jablonowski (Bochum, 1982), Miao Ying (Shanghai, 1985), Alexandra Pirici (Bucharest, 1982).

In preparation for the exhibition, through visits, in-depth sessions with museum staff and unplanned journeys, several collections and significant places of the city have been turned into resources, in a “research platform” which is capable of opening trajectories of socio-cultural and aesthetic investigation.

The Floating Collection, curated by Lorenzo Balbi and Caterina Molteni, draws inspiration from the decolonization debate and processes started in the ethnographic and anthropological museums all over the world which, starting from the 1990s, have committed to review the history of their own heritage, by experimenting new investigation approaches on collections and new mediation approaches with the audience. As it enters this context, the exhibition focuses on the languages of visual arts, by proposing them as tools which are capable of reinterpreting the histories of the city, reactivating and reimagining them with eyes free from the usual narrative structures and methodological approaches.

The “floating collection” is contrasted with the encyclopaedic and cataloguing perspective which characterizes the Western and modern museum model, by moving across the borders of the different disciplines without outlining standardized rules or interpretations, but asking questions, offering imageries and keeping itself open to continuous oscillations and variations.

The protagonists of the project are not so much the objects of the museums’ collection, but rather the ideas and imageries emerged from their reinterpretation. Therefore, the artists accompany us in a reflection on museology and its superstructures, the social-cultural history of the territory, the evocative nature of artefacts, and the potential for creation of fictional worlds which can shed a light on how we organize and enhance information today.
By focusing on the methods through which visual arts relate to the study of society, the exhibition also becomes an example of the polyphony of styles, techniques and approaches which characterize the most recent contemporary arts. 

There are several institutions and museums which, along with the MAMbo and in various ways, have been the research object for The Floating Collection.

For the Settore Musei Civici Bologna: Museo Civico Archelogico, Museo Civico Medievale, Museo Civico d'Arte Industriale e Galleria Davia Bargellini, Museo del Tessuto e della Tappezzeria “Vittorio Zironi”, Museo Morandi, Museo internazionale e biblioteca della musica, Museo del Patrimonio Industriale, Museo civico del Risorgimento.

For Sistema Museale di Ateneo / Alma Mater Studiorum—Università di Bologna: Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Museo della Specola, Collezione di Zoologia, Collezione di Anatomia Comparata, Collezione di Antropologia.

Other city institutions: Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna, Cimitero Monumentale della Certosa, Opificio delle Acque.

The publication The Floating Collection, edited by Caterina Molteni (Edizioni MAMbo, Italian-English) is published in conjunction with the exhibition and is designed as an extension of the research on the collections of the Bolognese museums taken into consideration. The publication is made up of an introductory session with the essays by the curators Lorenzo Balbi and Caterina Molteni; a part dedicated to the artists with texts and a collection of visual notes coming from their visit to Bologna as references which allow to visualize the research stage; finally, a chapter with three unpublished tales by Wissal Houbabi, Vaiva Grainytė and Lisa Robertson who broaden the reflection on the collections.