Personally, I do not have a sister. Just two brothers; Guclu and Gorkem. My parents wanted to have one but it didn't
have worked out. (Well, till today I mean….) Growing up with two brothers and having no sisters, added additional
prejudices for me I have to admit! But isn't Iife all about fighting with them? Well, not with your sisters but with your biases?
Anyway, the title of this text comes from the the lyric of a famous song; ‘Sisters are doin it for Themselves’ (1985) by Eurythmics.
(Eurythmics - Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves (2009)
It's a dynamic, motivating
pop song and I remembered it when I was searching to write for Davis Lisboa's solo exhibition Sister Museum. The term
‘sister museum’ is ralted with the notion of twinnin and has a similar meaning like the ‘sister cities’, a city that is twinned with another.
Does museum have gender? Are they female? Why not? In Turkish we do not have gender markers. We do not seperate people or things according
to gender. But at the same time, our motherland (unllike the fatherland in German) is called Anatolia, mean; full of mothers. It is not a
coincidence that Kybele and Virgin Mary are both from my hometown. Again, the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonder of the World,
the origin of all the museums is also located in the same city; Ephesus of the Western Anatolia. Thus, there is no need to wonder why
museums or muses are sisters.
As a matter of fact, Davis Lisboa himself, is good old virtual friend. An Internet phenomenon. We never met in person but we know
each other for a long time. He is originally from Brasil and lives and works in Barcelona, not in Lisbon. His family has roots in Portugal.
He is a trained painter who executes interesting experiments in museum studied. Davis Lisboa is one of the few artists who brings
modernist Dada, Fluxus and Institutional Critique tradition to our contemporary times, following the footsteps of Marcel Duchamp,
Robert Filliou and Marcel Broodthaers. He created his own museum as an artwork. According to Davis Lisboa; "A museum
is an activity, not a building." The Museum as Muse: Artists Reflectat MoMA that took place in 1999.
See https://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1999/muse/ I am proud
to note here that I have the chance to met some of the artists personally. )
Davis Lisboa and his museum Davis Museum is very active online especially in social media. He creates participatory projects
with artists and the audiance and shares his experiences on Instagram or Facebook. Personally, I see many similarities between the experiments
of the Davis Museum (https://www.davismuseum.com)
And also Davis Museum youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbXxZjaLAxuRZ544vFSRhAQ)
and the Istanbul Contemporary Art museum. We are not similar like a double wrapped egg but we are both artist run, experimental, online museums
and brave enough to be called Sister Museum’s. Referring to the title of this text: “Sisters are doin' it for Themselves”, I have altered the
lyrics of the song to make my own point clear:
"Now there was a time when they used to say
That behind every - museum.
There had to be a - great sponsor.
But in these times of change you know
That it's no longer true.
So we're comin' out of the studios
'Cause there's somethin' we forgot to say to you (we say)
Sister Museum’s are doin' it for themselves.
(Museums are) Standin' on their own two feet.
And (artists are) ringin' on their own bells.
Sister Museum’s are doin' it for themselves.
Now this is a song to celebrate
The conscious liberation of the Artist State!"
To conclude I may say that; “In our contemporary world, art is all about information. And a museum is just a container.”
Yes, it does have functions to 'preserve but more importantly to present' information. After they got uneathed, king's tomb have no relations
with mummies. Thus, in the age of information there is no such thing as owning an art collection or museum. It is not about property or control
but all about collaborating, sharing and spreading.
In this context, Davis Museum of Davis Lisboa is very important because it is searching for a way to combine art with museum. It is not afriad
to combine humor and technology to connect with the audiance. And it shows ud that, a museum is not a building but a state of mind. Thus, there
is no such thing as closing down a museum because of pandemic or anyting else. It is all about, keep on, sharing ideas...
Firstly I´d like to thank you for coming, I´d like to present myself my name is Davis Lisboa, I am a painter,
illustrator, and the creator of the Davis Museum, The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona.
Now I´m going to tell you a short story about how the museum was conceived.
In the year 2008, I finished my studies of art at the University of Barcelona and I was tired of following the rules of the
professors telling me what they wanted me to do and read. By coincidence when I finished my studies I went into the Casa del
Libro bookshop -not this one but the one in Passeig de Gracia- and bought a book- its called Art since 1900 modernism,
antimodernism, postmodernism, published by Thames and Hudson and it interested me because it told an alternative history of art.
Of the many things I found in the book, there was one which explained about museums which had been created by artists.
The book tells the story starting from the Boîte-en-valise (box in a suitcase) by Marcel Duchamp from the year 1936.
There are various versions of this work which he worked on until 1941, the Boîte-en-valise consists of a box in which there
are 68 reproductions in miniature of all of his work to that date, so the idea was to make something like a portfolio where his work
was collected. This happened in 1936 for one reason: Paris had been invaded by the Nazis so he was worried that all his work would
disappear and for this reason, he wanted to have a record of his work so, he created the Boîte-en-valise.
Then the book explained the next step in this narrative about artists who create their museums. The next step was the La Galerie légitime,
(the legitimate gallery) a work by Robert Filliou, a French artist related to Fluxus, an international movement directed by the
Lithuanian-American George Maciunas.Robert Filliou decided to create his La Galerie légitime as an imaginary commercial
gallery of art in his head, pointed by a hat. Some years after creating the gallery in 1962, he carried out a performance in Paris with his
Afro-American friend Ben Patterson, who was also involved with the Fluxus movement which was an international group with lots of artists.
He decided to carry out a route through Paris wearing his La Galerie légitime with some small pieces by Ben Patterson inside.
He walked through the streets of Paris asking people if they liked art and if they said “yes” he took out a piece out of the hat as if he were
a magician and presented the works of Patterson which were on sale and so it was like an auction of the work- Filliou had a
training in economy and was thus able to sell the work of Patterson.
Four years later a Belgian artist followed this line of work but in a different way. Whereas the previous examples were small objects in,
in the first case a suitcase and in the second a hat, the third was Marcel Broodthaers who created in 1968 the Musée d'Art Moderne,
Département des Aigles, (museum of modern art, department of eagles), which consisted in an artistic installation created in his own house.
We have to think about the context: we are in Brussels, Belgium in 1968, the Beatles presented the White Album, Manson had murdered Sharon Tate,
wife of the film-maker Roman Polański, more or less the beginning of the end of the hippy movement, there was a war in Vietnam and there was
a big revolution happening in Europe, in Paris and Prague, and also in Mexico, in Rio de Janeiro. In short, there was a big movement questioning
all kinds of institutions. This artist Marcel Broodthaers dedicated himself specifically to question how museums are instruments of
repression and control. He subverted this idea creating an imaginary institution in his own house claiming that the museums' power was now
in his hands. Claiming a role as artist, curator and museum director he was, as in the case of Duchamp, alternating the
idea of an ordinary object as an artwork, playing he used the museum as a basis, as a work of art itself.
As I read this narrative of museums made by artists, particularly when I read about La Galerie légitime it gave me an insight.
Something happened in my head and within seconds I had the whole Davis Museum project in mind. The key question for the creation of the
Davis Museum was if these artists have done this passed from the object where Duchamp presented his work, to the performative
object La Galerie légitime where the artist presents not his work but the work of another, Marcel Broodthaers passed from
performance to installation. So I thought: What more can I do? How can I advance in this line? So I thought the most advanced thing in society,
taking into account when this happened in 2009, could be within the social networks, so I thought I´m going to create a museum on the social networks.
I went to a shop to choose an object to symbolize the Davis Museum, and I found a voting urn. I liked the idea because this had a strong
political character also very subjective because it related to the expression of the character of Catalonia where the idea of being able to
vote is still important, so I decided to use this object to found my museum in miniature. Here is a photo and what I did was design the logo,
print a sticker, attach it and take a photograph of this readymade object. I made a group on Facebook, and to my surprise, it has been a fast
and categorical success.
In a short space of time, I began to invite artists through Facebook and ask for donations. By the 12th donation I already had an incredible
video by a really great artist called Richard Garet who lives in New York and sent me a fantastic video which, when I watched it with
my wife Anna Accensi and our cat, all three of us were amazed. From then I realized I had to take this project much more seriously
because I had an intuition that it was going to go well. One year later I got an email from a curator called Nav Haq asking me to
participate in an exhibition titled Museum Show, in Bristol in which 40 artists museums took part- and to my surprise…Who was there?
The three artists who were my precedents: Marcel Duchamp, Robert Filliou and Marcel Broodthaers, among others.
This was the presentation of Davis Museum in the contemporary art world.
From then, I began to work with more important artists until I worked with the artist, widow of John Lennon, Yoko Ono. If one day
you visit the web you can find many of the works in the Davis Museum and maybe I´ll find the work of Yoko Ono. It's not a
complete work but a fragment of Air Dispenser she created in 1971. She recommended I go to her exhibition in the Guggenheim Bilbao
to collect the piece, so I went there with my wife Anna Accensi to collect it and we made two videos which you can see online.
Its one of the fetish pieces and I am very happy with the piece of Yoko Ono in Davis Museum.
Then seeing the results we were obtaining I went to various museums and institutions in Catalonia I went from one place to another until I
had a meeting with the director of the Museums of Catalonia and took a small dossier of the Davis Museum with me to present the
project to him. We had the meeting he said I was crazy to create a museum. The reason was almost all the museums in Catalonia are not
economically viable, and of the 500 museums only four make money, The Picasso Museum, The Dali Museum, The Sagrada Familia Museum and
The Barça Museum (Barcelona Football Club) which by the way I went there recently and the entrance charge is 30 euros which is absurd.
You can get in to Macba for 4 or 7 euros depending on if you get a discount. 30 euros to me seems like a disaster but hey! Let´s leave that aside.
So I had this meeting he said I was crazy I have official guides what do I do now? And he said what we can do is recognize the Davis Museum´s
collection, we´re going to give you a diploma, a recognition, but we can´t give you money - which is what the museums of Catalonia need.
I immediately accepted the proposal and got a diploma. And for this reason, I knew I´d have to make a very low-cost contemporary art museum,
which is what you can see behind you…It´s very low cost, just a 20 cm cubic urn where miniature exhibitions are carried out - in this way
the overheads are less but since 2009 we have been working this way and we´ve carried out more than 30 exhibitions. Its also been interesting
because as well as receiving the diploma we have received invitations from the Catalan cultural institutions to participate in conferences
about museums and all kinds of activities I form part of. What happens to me frequently and I usually accept and participate.
So in this way I believe the Davis Museum has been acknowledged by artists- we now have more than 300 works donated by artists
from all over the world, it has been recognized in the art world- since the exhibition in Bristol – by art-historians and also by the cultural
institutions of Catalonia themselves, so I am very happy with the project. Now to finish up, this project has several departments or sections,
many sections all within the non-profit making low-cost museum and furthermore without a budget! So in these 13 sections which you can consult
on the website, for example, The Animated GIFs Section, The Audioguides Section, The Comics Section, etc.. and one of them is called
The Paintings Section From Davis Museum which is the only department where the works are on sale, none of the artists works are for sale
except these which are my own work and I put them on sale in order to keep the project running. So what you see here is a small selection from
that section, more or less that is a summary of how the project has developed and continues to function. Thanks for coming, that´s all.
Davis Lisboa, July 2019, Casa del LLibre, Barcelona, Spain.
LOS MUSEOS SIN TERRITORIO | MUSEUMS WITHOUT A TERRITORY
Una tipología de museo sin edificio | A tipology of Museum without a building
Silvia Cerrolaza Calvo
silcerca@gmail.com
Licenciada y Doctora en Bellas Artes por la Universidad Miguel Hernández
Museums have been reconsidered and criticised from artworks themselves and from instituting practice, questioning their role
and positing other types of creations or interventions as museums.
Some of the new museum typologies are in the limits between which is regarded as a museum and which is not. They are useful for
suggesting how museums could become in the future. Museums that may occur in broader territories, museums that may be both material
and inmaterial, mobile or nomad museums, ephemeral or temporary museums, museums that do not require large infrastructures nor
astounding buildings to fulfil their duties.
Some museum institutions have been renouncing to the traditional museum structure, step by step, while
it seems, to us, that the most notable change in the manner of viewing this structure has often come from
marginal areas of the institution. Te museum has been reviewed and criticised in every way, from the works
of art and from the institutional paractice, questioning its role and proposed other types of creations and
interventions as museums. These interventions surge and become the boundaries berween what is
instituted and what is institutional. We consider,
Some museum institutions have begun to renounce the traditional structure of the museum,
while in our opinion, the most notable change in the way of seeing the structure has often come
from the fringes of the institution. The museum has been reviewed and criticised in the works of
art themselves and from the institutional practice. Its role has been questioned and another type of
creations or interventions proposed as museums. These interventions appear and become the borders
between what is instituted and what is institutional. We consider, as Silverio Barriga states, that “the
institution is within the dynamics of the instituted and the institutional; it is that tension of what is
normalised and what is creative in the individual.” (BARRIGA, Silverio: El análisis institucional y la institución del poder,
en Quaderns de Psicologia, n.º 2-3, Barcelona, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Facultad de Psicología, Servicio de publicaciones, 1979, p. 25)
Besides, “what is instituted does not explain the institution as a whole. The possibility of changing, of
adapting the change within the institution, comes from its relationship with the institutional.” (BARRIGA, Silverio:
El análisis institucional y la institución del poder, en Quaderns de Psicologia, n.º 2-3, Barcelona, Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona,
Facultad de Psicología, Servicio de publicaciones, 1979, p. 25)
A great number of the works of art that are proposed as museums were, in their day, taken as
unique museum proposals stemming from other museum models, often questioning the existing ones.
These works, which we could call museum-works or work-museums, have been absorbed by the art
system as artistic works, ignoring their museum interest, since the art system has the capacity of
absorbing any type of artistic manifestation, even those that are on the borders and even those that
question the art system itself. The act of recognition in many cases a way of domesticating or defusing the
capacity of criticism or questioning of these workmuseums or museum-works.
The types of museums without buildings (For more information see chapter 5 Museos sin edificio of the
thesis Los museos sin edificio. Case study: el Museo Riojano de Arte Contemporáneo-MURAC de 2006 a 2013.
http://hdl.handle.net/11000/1873) are many, and for this reason we will consider only the museums
without territory. The museums without territory are those museums that have physical materiality
but that do not occupy a territory; in general, they are small and can change their location easily. The
museums without territory can be mobile (moving from one place to another, transporting their works)
or nomadic (the works remain in the place where they were created and the museums “moves” to them).
The mobile museum
The mobile museum is that which is mobile and easy to transport, does not occupy a territory since
its essence is moving from place to place. This type of museum has happened many times. In the
history of art there are different cases in which the idea of a mobile museum is used. Attending to the
characteristics of mobility of this type of museums we can establish two great groups: the portable museum
and that of a museum automobile or vehicle – both move from one place to another carrying their works.
The portable museum
Within the mobile museum we fin the portable museum, whose main characteristic is that to be
moved from one place to another, it needs to be transported.
The Atlas Mnemosyne (Atlas of images) by Aby Warburg could be considered a mobile museum. This
art historian began to work on the atlas in 1924 and his sudden death in 1929 left the work unfinished. The Atlas
Mnemosyne is made up of a collection of images – with very little text – with which Warburg sought to relate
the history of the memory of the European civilization. Fernando Checa expresses it in the first Spanish
language edition as follows: “Mnemosyne means to be, thus, a visual atlas showing, through comparative
consideration, an inventory of ancient precedents conserved in memory, which served to represent in the
Renaissance the subject of life in motion.” CHECA, Fernando:
La idea de imagen artística en Aby Warburg: El Atlas Mnemosyne (1924-1929) en Warburg, Aby: Atlas Mnemosyne,
Madrid, Akal, 2010, p. 139.)
The supposed function of the Mnemosyne Atlas, according to Checa, is to “explain through a vast
repertory of images, and a lesser one of words, the historical processes of artistic creation in what we
call today Modern Age.”(CHECA, Fernando: La idea de imagen artística
en Aby Warburg: El Atlas Mnemosyne (1924-1929) en Warburg, Aby: Atlas Mnemosyne, Madrid, Akal, 2010, p. 138.)
The Warburg atlas has been used on several occasions as a precent of the new museum
conceptions. An example is the exhibition ATLAS How to carry the world on one’s back? It took place
between November 16 2010 and March 27 2011 in the Reina Sofía Museum.
Davis Museum, photograph of Davis Lisboa, courtesy of Davis Lisboa
An exhibition curated by Georges Didi-Huberman that materialised as a proposal of showing how, through
the atlas, Warburg modified how the relations among the works themselves were conceived.
According to Sandra Santana, Warburg’s Bilderatlas becomes a metaphor of the museum understood as a manner
that relates images dissolving borders “between individuals, periods of history and geography”»
(Didi-Huberman, Georges: Atlas. ¿Cómo llevar el mundo a cuestas?, Madrid,
TF Editores/Museo Reina Sofía, 2010, p. 9 (quoted by Santana, Sandra: «Museos ficticios, reales e imaginarios.
De cómo el Atlas Mnemosyne de Aby Warburg acabó devorando el Museo Ficticio de Marcel Broodthaers». Revista
SONDA: Investigación y Docencia en las Artes y Letras, n.º 1, 2012, p. 18). Available in
http://issuu.com/revistasonda/). The exhibition is materialised through the works of different artists
that have a common concept based on knowledge which is transversal and not standardised in the world.
There have been multiple attempts to continue this project through homages or works based on this
antecedent. In what refers to creation of works based on the concept of more or less museum archives,
Isidor Regueda mentions some of them in his article,
Aby Warburg, inventor del Museo Virtual (Reguera, Isidoro:
Aby Warburg, inventor del Museo Virtual, El País, Madrid, 01/05/2010. Available in https://elpais.com/diario/2010/05/01/babelia/1272672757_850215.html.
There are many examples of artistic works that use the idea of a transportable museum, La boîte-en-valise,
is one of them. This is a work dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp, made between 1935 and 1941, and it was a
suitcase in which different reproductions of his work were included. It condensed nearly all of the work
done by Duchamp between 1910 and 1937, his readymades, drawings, texts, paintings, etc.
Some of the works which are miniaturised in it are The Fountain, L.H.O.O.Q. – a postcard of the Mona Lisa on
which Duchamp drew a mustache and a goatee witha pencil –, The Great Glass and Nude Walking Down the
Stairs , among others. He explains his work himself:
"Here a new manner of expression reappeared. Instead of painting something new, I wanted to
reproduce paintings and objects I liked, bring them together in a space as small as possible. I did not
know how to do it. First I thought of a book, but the idea did not satisfy me. Afterwards I thought it could
be a box in which all my works would be collected, and mounted as if in a small museum, a portable
museum, so to speak." Statements made in Marcel Duchamp's interview with J.J.
Sweeney reproduced in the article by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh: The fictional museums
by Marcel Broodthaers, Western magazine, no 177, February 1996, p. 47
With the first edition, in series, of this work, done between 1935 and 1940, twenty suitcases were created
with various designs and contents. Between 1950 and 1960 he created six other series, these without
the luggage case and changing the number of works reproduced. This work is one of the first productions
of the portable museum and another example of how Duchamp questioned the relative importance of the
original work of art.
Centro Portátil de Arte Contemporáneo-CPAC., photograph of Tomás Ruiz-Rivas,
courtesy of Tomás Ruiz-Rivas
Continuing with the use of suitcases as a museum we find some of the most representative works
of Joseph Cornell. These consists in objects and engravings contained in wooden boxes, many of
which have a glass front. With these boxes Cornell evoked the glass exhibit windows of the museums,
but they also have a peculiar characteristic: many of them are interactive, and were conceived to be
manipulated by the spectator.
One of the most representative boxes is the Museum Series, done at the end of the 1940s. It
is comprised of twenty glass flasks that contain, apparently, everything in the universe. Each of them is
named after its content. These are some of the names: “The Speed of Light”, “Thousand and One Nights”,
“Juggling Act”, “White Landscape”, etc. The intent of containing, in this case, all things of the universe is a
recurrent theme in what respects museums.
An example of itinerant exhibition without a building is the work Galerie Légitime(1962-1963)
by Robert Filliou. This gallery was a top hat full of small objects created by him or by other artists,
such as Benjamin Patterson and Georges Maciunas, whom Filliou presented to the public directly on
the street. Another example of gallery that fulfills these characteristics is the project Nasubi Gallery by
Tsuyoshi Ozawa. In this work Ozawa uses as exhibition space a number of a type of post boxes which in Japan
are used for milkmen to leave the full bottles and take away the empty ones. Ozawa invites artists of different
nationalities to exhibit their works in his portable gallery. The project began in 1993 in Tokyo and has
travelled along different spaces, theatres, bookshops, stores and museums throughout the world.
There are also some more recent creations that span the scope of the mobile museum, such as the
HoMu Homeless Museum. This museum materialises in different way, the most original being a small
stand inspired by “Lucy’s Psychiatric Help” booth of the comic strip Snoopy, that becomes the portable
headquarters of the museum, together with a web page, a collection of objects and different events.
The HoMu criticises the art market, the power of the institutions, the star architects, the real estate
business, etc.
The book by plastic artist, Keri Smith, How to be an Explorer of the World, Museum of Art/Portable Life ,
originally published in English in 2008, proposes 59 explorations that lead the reader to observe and
interact with the physical world that surrounds them and experiment the depth of aesthetics with which it
can be perceived. The author states:
This book can be your metaphoric suitcase: a place in which to collect and register your discoveries.
How do you observe? It is also a museum, your own museum with your personal vision of the world. It
will be quite different to any other museum because you are unique. You can enrich it at any time and
touch all it contains. Everything is free, but the best thing is that it is portable, so you can take it when
you travel, and can even organise spontaneous exhibits wherever you are and sell or not entrance
tickets. This museum changes with your point of view, you can visit it when you need ideas or when
you want to see the images you have in mind. (SMITH, Keri:
Cómo ser un explorador del mundo. Museo de arte / vida portátil, México, Fondo de cultura económica,
2012, p. 12.)
The project, Retando a la suerte, carried out in 2013, is a materialisation of the current concept of a
portable museum. Although more than a museum it is a portable exhibition. To carry this project out,
thirteen curator approached an exhibition with the twelve members of the NOPHOTO collective.
The result takes on a single form: “Thirteen boxes meant as thirteen portable photography exhibitions.
Thirteen views of the same collective, twelve photographers and a curator”
(PARDO, Tania: «Proyecto», Retando a la suerte. Available at
http://retandoalasuerte.nophoto.org/proyecto/ )
Museo de los cajones,photograph of H.U. Siegenthaler,courtesy of H.U. Siegenthaler
Within this type of museums there is the tendency toward minute museums which hold works of very
small dimensions. This is the case of the Museum of the Drawers (Das Schublaenmuseum), a work by
Herbert Distel made between 1970 and 1977. This museum is a representative collection of the art done
between 1960 and 1970. The Drawer Museum is located in a cabinet made for thread spools which has twenty
drawers, each of them divided into 25 compartments, which makes a total of 500 compartments. Each of
these comportments is 57 millimeters wide by 48 millimeters deep and 43 millimeters high. The works
it holds belong to recognised artists of prestige such as Nam June Paik, Vito Acconci, Robert Cottingham,
Joseph Beuys, Carl Andre, Chuck Close, Eduard Ruscha, John Cage, etc.
Proyecto Retando a la suerte; Detail, second box, photographs of Collective Nophoto,
courtesy of Collective Nophoto
The John Erickson Museum of Art (JEMA), created in 2003 by John Erickson, is also a museum of reduced
dimensions, an aluminum chest 40.5 x 30.5 x 23 centimetres approximately. It is a museum that
carries out its functions in a portable and inexpensive manner both in space and in time – the duration of its
exhibits is usually, for example, nine hours and fifteen minutes – the JEMA, in the words of its author, allows
thinking in a different manner on nature, the nature of art and the artistic practice.
Another small-sized portable museum is the Collection of Great Works of Contemporary Art of
the MURAC. With the creation of the Collection of Great Works of Contemporary Art, the MURAC meant
to create a collection that would complement the art works the MURAC held and that would have its
own distinctive features and identity. This collection includes different artistic media and languages and
treasures work produced or created expressly for the unique space of Galería Minúscula (http://www.galeriaminuscula.com), a micro exhibition space 106 centimetres high, 85 centimetres
wide and very deep.
The title of the exhibition emphasizes the importance of the works gathered in this collection
and afforded the spectator the opportunity of contemplating a choice selection of key works in the
development of art. The exhibition includes works by Félix González-Torres, Cai Guo-Qiang, Barbara Kruger,
Joseph Kosuth, Maurizzio an, Sherrie Levine, Erwin Wurm, Louise Bourgeois, Urs Fischer and Yayoi Kusama.
The works are of reduced dimensions, the small size needed to be lodged in the Minute Gallery.
The works of the Collection of Great Works of Contemporary Art are actually miniaturised
appropriations, an ironic play comparing the adjective “great” of the name with the actual size of
the works exhibited.
There is a museum that boasts being the smallest contemporary art museum in the world. It is Davis
Lisboa’s Davis Museum whose dimensions are de 20 x 20 x 20 centimetres, and besides, it is portable. This
museum was founded in Facebook in the year 2009 and it is the first and only contemporary art museum
created in a ballot box. It has been defined as “a liquid museum in the web, but it is also a physical centre
recognized by the Generalitat de Cataluña”.(BOSCO, Roberta / CALDANA,
Stefano: Un pequeño gran museo, El País,16 de septiembre de 2013. Available at:
https://blogs.elpais.com/arte-en-la-edad-silicio/2013/09/un-pequeno-gran-museo.html ).
The Davis Museum has a permanent collection of contemporary
art including creations of artists such as Francesc Torres and Yoko Ono. But it is also considered a
subversive museum. Its shape reminds us of a ballot box, “it presents itself to society as a sort of “artistic
political party”. If the museum is a ballot box, then the work of art is a vote of confidence in favour of the
Davis Museum, indicates Lisboa». (BOSCO, Roberta / CALDANA,
Stefano: Un pequeño gran museo, El País,16 de septiembre de 2013. Available at:
https://blogs.elpais.com/arte-en-la-edad-silicio/2013/09/un-pequeno-gran-museo.html ).
Collection of Great Contemporary Art Works of the Museo Riojano de Arte
Contemporáneo MURAC, photographs of MURAC, courtesy of MURAC.
Some of these portable museums have wheels to make moving easier, as is the case of the Centro
Portátil de Arte Contemporáneo-CPAC (México, 2009), a project sponsored by Antimuseo(María María
Acha-Kutscher and Tomás Ruiz-Rivas), Eder Castillo and Arturo Ortiz that consists of a low price
transportable device for the exhibition of art which can be moved and mounted by a single person. It
has portable audio-visual resources with enough autonomy for one intervention. Its performances are
brief, lasting from two to four hours. Its performances are showing works of art and serve as supporting
infrastructure for cultural activities (performances, lectures, concerts) and to “mark” the urban space
generating public space. The CPAC seeks the connection between strategies of re-appropriation of
the city by the collectives of social outcasts (minority races, wandering salesmen, prostitutes, immigrants,
homosexuals in repressive contexts, determined feminine collectives, etc.) and the artistic practice
that affect directly the urban fabric.
Notable among the rolling museums is Museo de la Calle (Street Museum) a project created by the
Colombian collective Cambalache in 1999. The site of this museum was a car circulating around Bogotá
with objects of different types which were obtained by exchange with passers-by. Thus its collection was
never permanent, but temporal, and besides it was a limited, travelling museum. The museum moves
to exhibit its collection and at the same time to exchange its contents. Carolina Cayceum, a member
of the collective, comments: “exhibiting in the street is recognising a public, some of whom are illiterate, who
are surprised by an exhibition that resembles more a flea market, a joke or a trinket shop. They find a
museum when they had not planned on visiting one.” (Extracted from the website of the
Museo de la Calle)
A vehicle museum or car
The museum-vehicles differ from the mobile museums in that these have an engine and do
not need the strength of one or more people to be transported, but only one driver. This variety of
museum can use different types of vehicles such as a van, a bus, a lorry, a boat, etc. One of the first
exhibition spaces of this type was the Liverpool mobile and travelling museum (1884), a subsidised
museum to propagate knowledge of the patrimony in the schools.
In Spain the first case of a museum vehicle was that of the Museo Circulante (Circulating Museum)
(1931), a touring truck sponsored by the Patrimony of Pedagogical Missions, dependent on the Ministry
of Public Education and Fine Arts. According to Martí Perán, “the museum was comprised of two
collections of fourteen copies of historical paintings deposited in the Museum del Prado. El Greco,
Velázquez, Ribera, Murillo and Goya, reproduced by Ramón Gaya, Eduardo Vicente and Juan Bonafé”.
(PERAN, Martí: Del museo circulante al arte ambulante.
Notas para una genealogía local de la portabilidad.
Available at:
http://www.martiperan.net/print.php?id=53)
Within the automobile type museums, one of the vehicles most used is the bus. The Museumbus
is a bus which has the necessary facilities for the exhibition of works. The content is usually a small
selection due to the reduced space if we compare it to a conventional museum. Aurora León is of the
opinion that «the social function of this museum resource is incalculable due to the ease with which
a circuit throughout the city can be established with fixed schedule, “transporting” the museum to
the public instead of the inverse movement.» (
LEÓN, Aurora: El Museo. Teoría, praxis y utopía, Madrid, Cátedra, 1982, p. 232.).
The concept of the museumbus is that the museum has to travel where the public is, instead of having
the public travel to where the museum is. The first museumbus was built in Poland in 1949 by the
National Museum of Warsaw. One of the most famous museumbuses was the Linder museumbus which
began to circulate in France in 1972. This museum was created as a consequence of the increase of the price
of oil in 1975, since it approached an easier manner in which the mobile museum could travel to the schools
instead of having school buses taking students to the museum.
Nomadic museum
Nomadic museum is understood to be that which goes from one place to another without establishing
fixed residence and without transporting its works. Here the museum travels and its travels
catalogues works of art which remain in their place, independently of that in which the museum or the
device that acts as the museum is. In the case of the nomadic museum, what travels is not the work of art
as in the portable museum, but the museum itself. The museum is wherever the work of art is.
An example of the nomadic museum is the
Micromuseo(“al fondo hay sitio”)(Micromuseo project website:
http://micromuseo.org.pe), a project led by the art historian and curator Gustavo Buntinx. The
project surged in 1983 as a response to the lack of a Museum of Modern or Contemporary Art in Lima,
almost the only Latin American capital which did not have a museum of this type until recently, since
the current MAC (Museum of Contemporary Art) was founded in 2013. The Micromuseum, developed a
proposal that:
was not limited to collecting and exhibiting collections although the organisation of exhibitions
and gathering knowledge were among its objectives. This museum does not accumulate objects: it makes
them circulate. It does not consecrate nor sacralise: it places them in context. It does not have a single
location, it travels and distributes itself according to each of its activities, using to advantage unusual
or under-used spaces. Tombs, ruined palaces. Also some of the best galleries of the media, sporadically
intervened for projects which are temporary.(Text taken from the Micromuseum project website:
https://micromuseo.org.pe/rutas/index.html)
In the before mentioned type of nomadic museums, the MURAC Museo Riojano de Arte
Contemporáneo. The MURAC is a nomadic museum of limited territory since the museum is wherever the
work of art is found. In this sense the MURAC could be considered a ubiquitous museum since it can
materialise itself anywhere. The MURAC stems from an apparent weakness that ended up becoming a
strength: not having a building. Not having a building meant becoming a museum without limits. A
museum in which the place of the work of art is not important since it could be found anywhere.
The nomadic museum can also be quite immaterial, as is the case of the Musée du point de
vue More information on the Musée du point de vue on Jean-DanielBerclaz's page:
http://www.fiatlux.fr/musee/) inaugurated by French artist Jean-Daniel Berclaz
in 1997. This museum is immaterial since it is found in the point of view, and the point if view is always
ephemeral. During the exhibitions of his museum, Berclaz prepares a table with food and drink, as if it
were a conventional inauguration of any exhibition in any other museum. The difference is that what
this museum inaugurates is a manner of seeing the place, an outdoor place. Berclaz has the intention of
examining how society relates with the landscape.
Occasionally the nomadic museum can be a single representation, as it happens with Le musée c’est moi ,
a work by Leonel Fernández Pinola, which consists of a T-shirt printed with the text “Le musée c’est
moi”, a phrase taken from Rafael Squirru, director of the Buenos Aires Museum of Modern Art, who
said it every time someone asked where was the museum. This was because the Buenos Aires Museum
of Modern Art did not have a site during its first four years, 1956 to 1960. During that time its director
managed to carry out museum activities in all kinds of spaces. As we see, the Buenos Aires Museum of
Modern Art was another example of a nomadic museum.
Conclusions
As we have seen through the examples given in this article, the museum becomes mobile and
limitless, dissolving its frontiers to intervene in the world. The museum building is not necessary for the
existence of the museum. The museum institution is adapting slowly to a society ruled by mobility,
both physically and mentally, and by immateriality; consequently the museum is becoming slowly a more
immaterial entity. The museum is mutating towards an institution that is variable and even ephemeral.
Some of the characteristics set forth are on the borders of what is considered museum and what is
not considered museum. The limits of the traditional museum began to blur many years ago; this helps
us imagine how the museums of the future can be. Museums that could materialise in more extensive
territories, museums that could be both material and immaterial, mobile museums or nomadic ones,
ephemeral museums or temporary ones, museums that do not require great infrastructures nor
astounding buildings to fulfill their functions.
Musée du point de vue. Photograph of Jean-Daniel Berclaz,
courtesy of Jean-Daniel Berclaz.
Merchandising and stationery of the Museo Riojano de Arte Contemporáneo MURAC.
Photograph of MURAC, courtesy of MURAC.
Bibliography
AUTHOR. Los museos sin edificio.Estudio de caso práctico: el Museo Riojano de Arte Contemporáneo-MURAC de 2006 a 2013.
BARRIGA, S.(1979). "Institutional analysis and the institution of power" at psychology notebooks, nº 2-3.
Barcelona: Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Faculty of Psychology, Publications Service.
https://www.quadernsdepsicologia.cat/article/view/374/369
H. D. BUCHLOH, B. (1996). The fictional museums of Marcel BroodthaersRevista de Occidente, n.º 177, p. 47.
LEÓN, A. (1982). The museum. Theory, praxis and utopia.
PERAN, M. This is not a museum. Mobile artifacts lurking.http://www.martiperan.net/projects
RUIZ-RIVAS, T. (2014). Artists museums (Institutional appropriation), Essay edited by Antimuseo.
Available at https://issuu.com/antimuseo/docs
SANTANA, S. (2012)."Museos ficticios, reales e imaginarios. De cómo el Atlas Mnemosyne de Aby Warburg acabó devorando el Museo Ficticio
de Marcel Broodthaers" en Revista SONDA: Research and Teaching in Arts and Letters, No. 1.https://revistasonda.upv.es/numero/2012/
SMITH, K. (2012). How to be a world explorer. Museum of art / life laptop. Mexico: Economic Culture Fund.
WARBURG, A. (2010). Atlas Mnemosyne.Madrid: Akal.
Silvia Cerrolaza Calvo, Logroño, 1979
Graduate and Doctor of Fine Arts Arts by Miguel University Hernández with the thesis
The museums without a building. Case study practical: the Riojano Museum of Art Contemporary MURAC from 2006 to 2013
University Specialist in Visual and Intermediate Arts by the Polytechnic University From Valencia.
Professor of Plastic Arts and Design in the Graphic Design specialty at the Higher School of Design
from La Rioja. Currently Head of Studies.
THE NIGHT IN WHICH JENNIFER POULMARC'H DREAMED WITH THE DAVIS MUSEUM
Facebook, July 3-5, 2018
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
Hello Davis, a good think for you. It's very good
the songs of museum! I dream to visit museum at night, Davis!
Davis Lisboa:
Oh...really? Tell me more about it! Write to me about what has happened in your dream!
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
Lol!! I don't know... It's a special moment with a calm atmosphere and the night makes more attentive, Davis!
Davis Lisboa:
Give me more details, please...
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
I dreamed to meet some past artists, like in the Louvre
...you know a full different artists from different time and for me night is a privilege time with capers.
And there the architecture of the Davis Museum...
Davis Lisboa:
Wow! Tell me more!
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
It's particular. Space goes differently light, volume, etc. The light is for me very important and
I think the natural light it's better for a piece of art. I am more attentive to my senses when
ambient is natural, Davis. And you? Lol! It interests me why you have to record that.
I just want to know why have record
songs of museum?
Davis Lisboa:
Well, my idea was to to expand the Davis Museum with different artworks...
Davis Lisboa:
You know, add something different to the museum...
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
Yes, I agree! Lol!
Davis Lisboa:
Let me see if I understood correctly. You dreamed that you were in Paris
and went to visit the Louvre. There, you found several works by different artists from different eras.
And then, walking through the corridors lit by the daylight, you discovered that the Davis Museum
was being exhibited. Is this what you dreamed of?
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
Exactly!! Hahahaha!!
Davis Lisboa:
What was the work of art that was being exhibited inside the Davis Museum?
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
Yes,
Le Radeau de la Méduse (The Raft of the Medusa) by the French Romantic painter and
lithographer
Théodore Géricault. I don't really know why...Lol! And some works of comtemporary art too.
Davis Lisboa:
This painting is huge! So it was a reproduction of it in a small format?
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
You're right. You can only take one true jellyfish in an aquarium. Or just a raft, more or
less like this.
Davis Lisboa:
How was the room where the Davis Museum was exhibited? Was the room empty or was the
space being shared with other works of art by different artists?
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
I don't know. I must think.
Davis Lisboa:
Sorry, Jennifer. I need to know what you dreamed of. I would like to make a text about it.
Jennifer Poulmarc'h:
No, it was just a place where you can listen to some audio. You could hear something
contemporary and look at an old piece. For example, you can listen to some recordings of
storms, a manifestation of people or people crying and seeing
Le Radeau de la Méduse. What do you think about it?
Davis Lisbon:
Incredible. I think that painting and sounds share the same drama.
DOMESTIC SPACE AS CONTEMPORARY ARTISTIC STRATEGY
Interview by Job Sánchez, Phd Student, Gender and Diversity Programm at the
University of Oviedo.
Barcelona and Gijón, Spain, October 2017.
Job Sánchez:
When was the Davis Museum founded?
Davis Lisboa:
The Davis Museum started its activity 1st January 2009.
Job Sánchez:
How were its beginnings?
Davis Lisboa:
We could divide the Davis Museum history into five stages.
The first one refers to its conceptualization. After having studied for twelve years at the
University of Barcelona,
I accidentally entered a bookshop in Barcelona in 2008, and I found there a copy of a book
entitled Arte desde 1900. Modernidad, antimodernidad, postmodernidad by
Hal Foster,Rosalind Krauss,Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H. Buchloh. Once I bought it, I started to summary it and while I was doing it,
I came across that the authors had created some alternative narratives within the history of art.
One of them caught my attention and it was that artists created their own museums.
The account was constructed through works such as the Boîte-en-valise (Box in a suitcase)
by Marcel Duchamp, La galerie légitime (The legitimate gallery) by Robert Filliou and the
Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (Museum of Modern Art, Department of Eagles)
by Marcel Broodthaers. That was the conceptual triggering of the project.
The second stage refers to its physical development. As each of the works aforementioned had their
symbols; a suitcase for the Boîte-en-valise; a hat for La Galerie légitime;
and an eagle for the Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles; I thought the
Davis Museum could have its own. Thus, and without any preconceived idea, I went to a
DIY shop in search of a
readymade for my museum. By chance, in the shop's plastic section, a 20-cubic centimeter
methacrylate ballot box caught my attention, as it had some characteristics such as transparency,
portability, lightness, and low cost but, above all, it had intrinsic political content.
Back in my study, I designed the logo for the
Oficina Española de Patentes y Marcas (OEPM) (Spanish Office for Patents and Brands).
I took a photograph of the ballot box with its sticker and created a
Facebook group. I invited the artists to participate in the project and, to my surprise,
the response was immediate. The collection was broadening quickly, but one of them marked a
milestone: the excellent art video Gap, Edition 5/5, by Richard Garet,
was the triggering that motivated me to carry the project forward.
The third stage refers to the institutional recognition. In order to carry the Davis Museum
forward, I got in touch with the
Departament de Cultura de la Generalitat de Catalunya (Department of Culture of the Generalitat
of Catalonia) in search of funding. I got a meeting with the head of
Secció de Coordinació Museística i Protecció de Béns Mobles (Museum Coordination and Personal
Property Protection Section) and I told him about the project. Mr. J (We will call him Mr. J. to
preserve his privacy) warned me about the shortfall finance of the museums in
Catalonia
and he recommended me to give up my project. When I realized the situation, I got depressed.
But later, Mr. J. proposed an alternative: the Generalitat would not fund the Davis Musem,
but they could recognize it as a cultural entity. I accepted the proposal and I committed to
sending the required documents on the Davis Museum activities to the Department of Culture.
The fourth stage refers to the entrance of the Davis Museum in the international
contemporary art scene. In 2010, I received an invitation from
Nav Haq, a British contemporary art curator, to participate in a great collective exhibition entitled
Museum Show, at Arnolfini,
Bristol, United Kingdom. The exhibition would gather a fourty-museums selection created by artist
from around the world, where, the Boîte-en-valise by Marcel Duchamp, La galerie légitime
by Robert Filliou and the Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles by Marcel Broodthaers,
among others, would be exhibited, to my surprise. The circle was closing: I started with the theory
and the historical precedents; I went through the creation of the museum/artwork and I ended
exhibiting it along with the historical precedents.
Davis Lisboa:
What led me to create the Davis Museum was the curiosity of whether it was possible to talk,
refresh and carry La Galerie légitime by Robert Filliou forward, linking it to a contemporary
context of social nets.
Job Sánchez:
Did you have previous experience in the field of cultural affairs?
Davis Lisboa:
No.
Job Sánchez:
What do you think about the traditional spaces of exhibition/selling/promotion?
Davis Lisboa:
In my opinion, art spaces will no longer have a single traditional model, but they will be
fragmented into several complex realities.
Job Sánchez:
Why do you choose a domestic space as a place for the materialization of the project?
Davis Lisboa:
Actually, I didn't choose a domestic space, but the space of a ballot box for the materialization
of the project. The
Matryoshka those Russian dolls which are hollow and which house another smaller doll inside,
could explain something about the space issue in the Davis Museum. The ballot box is on
a pedestal, which is in my art study, which is on the top of my duplex, which is on
Carrer de Puigmartí 7, which is in Barcelona. The fact that the Generalitat of Catalonia
has asked me an address means, for me, hardly a collateral effect. The Davis Museum
is above all ambulant, even though it can be presented in a closed and fixed space.
Job Sánchez:
Do you think that there is currently a strategy of the domestic in visual arts?
Davis Lisboa:
Yes.
Job Sánchez:
What do you think this is due to?
Davis Lisboa:
I suppose that the strategy of the domestic responds to a specific group of artists interested
in questioning and challenging the sacralized spaces of art. Within this context, two fundamental
ideas are developed. The first one is that "art can be anywhere" and the second one is that the
domestic strategy generates a degree of empowerment for artists, which provokes, in a certain way,
that the traditional limits of art spaces enter in crisis.
Job Sánchez:
Do you think that these spaces contribute to redefining the artistic canon?
Davis Lisboa:
Yes.
Job Sánchez:
In which way?
Davis Lisboa:
With their micro personal
narratives published on the net, these domestic spaces question the art monopoly that the
establishment possesses.
Job Sánchez:
How are the exhibition proposals elaborated?
Davis Lisboa:
The Davis Museum exhibition proposals are elaborated in five stages. The first stage
is inviting a contemporary artist through
Facebook and we agree with him/her about an artwork to be exhibited. The second stage is
producing a script for his/her
videoexhibition, which is a concept created in 2009 and which means making a virtual exhibition
of an artwork in the format of art video or video performance to be published on the net.
The third stage is the design of an e-flyer and the massive sending of it to a list of about
10000 contacts within the contemporary art around the world. The fourth stage is the reception
of visitors in The Polling Station From Davis Museum. The fifth and last stage is the account of
the number of visitors, which is later sent to the Department of Culture of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
Job Sánchez:
Do you work individually or with a team / collaborations?
David Lisboa:
I usually work individually. We work as a team, especially when making video exhibitions. This collaborative work can be online if the artist is in a far city or country; or offline, if the artist lives or comes expressly to Barcelona to work on his video exhibitions.
Job Sánchez:
How is the promotion carried out?
Davis Lisboa:
The promotion is done through a mass mailing to a list of more than 10,000 transversal contacts
within contemporary art, from students of Fine Arts to contemporary art commissioners of the
star system. Publications are also created in EventBrite, Blogger, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest,
Tumblr, YouTube, Vimeo, etc.
Job Sánchez:
When it comes to contact with artists/coordinators, what selection criteria do you follow?
Davis Lisboa:
I almost always contact with artists and a few times with coordinators. The criterion of
selection is that the artist's work is contemporary in form and content, especially linked to art,
politics, and technology.
Job Sánchez:
Do you have any parity criteria in mind?
Davis Lisboa:br
I have in mind gender parity: 57% of the video exhibitions have been done for male artists
and 43% for female artists. That's not so bad. There is little left to achieve equality.
On the other hand, I did not take into account the parity with non-Western artists, with 38%
of the video exhibitions; nor with LGBT artists (Lesbians, Gais, Bisexuals, and Transsexuals),
with 3%. Which does not mean that there are works of these groups in the collection of the
Davis Museum.
Job Sánchez:
Do you think that the use of social networks and digital media have favored the promotion
of current art?
Davis Lisboa:
Of course.
Job Sánchez:
Does this influence the public's perception of contemporary art?
Davis Lisboa:
Digitalization is creating a new framework of artistic practices that alters the perception
of contemporary art. Both museum walls and artworks are dematerializing. Museum warehouses
are being transformed into digital archives. The number of online visitors to museums is much
higher than offline visitors. The latter refuses to play a voyeuristic role within the
institution. They want to participate, even if it is taking a selfie.
ARTISTS HERE AND NOW: POWER, CORRUPTION & LIES’ VI Edition (2017) AT BLANCA SOTO ARTE,
MADRID BY BLOUIN ARTINFO | DECEMBER 28, 2017
Blanca Soto Arte, Madrid, is hosting the sixth edition of “Artists Here and Now.”
The selected artists included in the VI Edition are Maria Alcaide, Pablo Bellot, Clement Carat,
Álvaro Chior, Jennifer Custodio, Julio Falagán, Urtzi Ibargüen, Davis Lisboa, Céleste Rogosin,
Estela Sanchís, Amélie Scotta, and Isidoro Valcárcel Medina (Guest artist).
This event tries to reflect the nuances and changes in the creative thinking of the artists who
live this reality and the change, which determines their way of working and thinking here and
now as structures are changing in art. The House of Velázquez, Ádemém de France à Madrid collaborates
with the project “Artists Here and Now” granting a scholarship of residence of two months to one of
the selected creators. The gallery also has a special collaboration with film director Isidoro Valcárcel
Medina as he wants to support the creators who participate.
All national or international creators residing or not in Spain can be submitted, except for the
artists who usually work with the gallery and those selected in the previous calls of “Artists Here
and Now.”
All national or international creators residing or not in Spain can be submitted, except for the
artists who usually work with the gallery and those selected in the previous calls of “Artists Here and Now.”
The exhibition is on view through February 2, 2018, at Blanca Soto Arte, Calle de Almadén, 13,
28014 Madrid, Spain.
(Sixth edition)
A project directed by Imanol Marrodán
and designed by the AIR independent platform.
Inauguration: Thursday, December 14th, from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
From December 14th, 2017 to February 2nd, 2018
Galería Blanca Soto Arte
Almadén 13, 28014, Madrid, Spain.
CHOCOLATE COIN | MESCHAC GABA | DAVIS MUSEUM
Who inspired you to create the Davis Museum?
Conceptually, I was inspired by Robert Filliou, a French artist of the Fluxus movement and author of
Galerie légitime. Formally, I was inspired by digital art and web design of social networks.
What do you expect the viewers to think about the Davis Museum?
I hope that viewers understand that there is a narrative within the history of art that deals with the
artists who created their museums. This narrative is constructed through Marcel Duchamp (Boîte-en-valise,
1936-1941), Robert Filliou (Galerie légitime, 1962-1963) and Marcel Broodthaers (Musée d'Art Moderne,
Département des Aigles, 1968-1972) . Following this narrative, I decided to create the Davis Museum,
The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (2009-ongoing), which is, simultaneously,
a readymade sculpture, a non-profit collective art project, and at the same time, a cultural entity recognized
by the Generalitat de Catalunya (an Autonomous Community in Spain). Created symbolically in an electoral ballot
box and disseminated mainly through Facebook, the Davis Museum is also the smallest contemporary art
museum in the world.
Why have you chosen this medium?
I chose the artistic installation (expanded to the Internet) because it is one of the main genres in
contemporary art. This allows the incorporation of various media to create a visual or spatial experience in
a specific environment, combining everyday objects, artisanal, artistic and electronic, as well as digital
archives on the Internet, in which the viewer can interact with the work /museum.
What artist is currently exhibiting at the Davis Museum?
The artist
Meschac Gaba (Cotonou, Benin, 1961), author of the "
Museum of Contemporary African Art" (1996-7). The importance of his postcolonial “museum" is that it has been a
conceptual advance for international cultural institutions: it was not conceived as an "ethnographic" museum
of African art, but specifically, as the first "contemporary" Museum of African Art. With this gesture of
empowerment, Meschac Gaba challenges the cultural hegemony of the West, through the use of the narratives
of minority cultures.
What work of art is being exhibited at the Davis Museum?
The work is titled "Chocolate Coin"; it is a piece of edible art covered with a thin golden aluminum wrapper.
On this chocolate disk there is a stamped relief with the official logo of the "Museum of Contemporary African Art",
consisting of a map of this continent and the inscription, "
Tate Modern", corresponding with his exhibition held there in London, in 2013. "Chocolate Coin" is a component
of Gaba’s
Museum Shop, one of the twelve sections of the "Museum of Contemporary African Art". The Museum Shop consists
of an installation built with wooden pallets on the floor, presenting a vast collection of objects, such as t-shirts,
postcards, bags, brooches, bathroom curtains, necklaces, earrings made with banknotes and frayed banknotes,
limited edition objects and sculptures by other artists. The Shop is inspired by the popular street markets of his
native country, Benin.
Davis Lisboa
Barcelona, December 5th, 20017
THE MUSEUMS WITHOUT BUILDING
Number 1
April 2017
With the support of VEGAP / Proposals 2016
Case Study. El Museo Riojano De Arte Contemporáneo-MuRAC (The Riojano Museum of Contemporary Art-MuRAC)
The Miguel Hernández University of Elche
Faculty of Fine Arts, Art Department
Doctoral Thesis Conducted by Silvia Cerrollaza Calvo
Directed by Dr. Teresa Marín García
Altea, 2015
Page 270
CIIA
"Toda obra de arte es un delito no perpetrado"
Edited by CIIA, Centro de Investigación sobre la Institucionalidad del Arte, an Antimuseo project
(Tomás Ruíz-Rivas and María María Acha-Kutscher).
Collaborators:
Nadie Nunca Nada No (Ramón Mateos)
La Grieta (Lorenzo García-Andrade, María San Vicente, Letícia Ybarra and Jorge San Vicente).
Davis Museum | The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona was founded
on Facebook in 2009. It is the first contemporary art museum created in a ballot box through social
networks. It functions simultaneously as a readymade sculpture, a collective work of art, and a
temporary, mutable conceptual space more than a physical one. A provocation to the art establishment.
With its own permanent contemporary art collection, the Davis Museum is also a non-profit
artistic project that organizes and produces exhibitions, encourages research, and promotes
contemporary art exhibitions. Additionally, the Davis Museum organizes traveling exhibitions
to other cultural centers, museums, and institutions, nationally and internationally, while
generating debate, thought, and reflection. Its mission is the selection, presentation, study,
dissemination, and preservation of contemporary art by emerging and renowned artists from around
the world.
Although the Davis Museum can't challenge the cultural hegemony, it's an example of the
emergence of independent museums created by artists to crack the monopoly of big cultural
institutions, the establishment, and an attempt to create alternative channels and increase the
visibility of contemporary visual creation, organizing exhibitions, uploading videos and
publications as an alternative channel of expressive information. And yes, it could be seen as
a small revolution in the way we think, organize and act culturally and politically, and not
just in the way we create art with more or less exhibition space or funding.
The Generalitat de Catalunya (Autonomous Community of Kingdom of Spain) formally recognizes the
Davis Museum's permanent collection of contemporary art.
INTERVIEW WITH DAVIS LISBOA
By Tomás Ruiz-Rivas
Tomás Ruiz-Rivas: First of all let's define your starting point: if I am not mistaken you are a visual artist.
Davis Lisboa: I am accumulating layers: I am an illustrator, visual artist and founder/manager of
the Davis Museum. In this way, I question traditional hierarchies, blurring the boundaries
between graphic and plastic arts, high and low culture, art and the market, craft, and technology.
Therefore, I believe in creating “border conflicts,” which is one of the defining elements of my work.
TRR: You studied art in Brazil – is that right?
DL: I studied Art and Design in Brazil, and then for two years I attended workshops with Carlos Fajardo,
a professor in the Department of Visual Arts and Communication at the University of São Paulo (USP).
Fajardo is one of the most intelligent people I have met and he has represented Brazil many times in the Sao Paulo
and Venice Biennales.
TRR: When did you come to Barcelona?
DL: In 1987, the year I began studying painting at the Escola Massana.
TRR: What is the origin of the Davis Museum?
DL: The first phase of the Davis Museum was in 2005 when I was invited by an art gallery
in Madrid to participate in the Holland Art Fair. Upon arriving in The Hague, I went to visit the
Gemeentemuseum (Municipal Museum of The Hague), where I discovered the Boîte-en-valise
by Marcel Duchamp. This work, by the way, didn’t cause me any deep interest at first sight. However,
today it surprises me to remember how that fortuitous encounter would bring, afterward, unpredictable
consequences.
The second was in 2008, when I finished Fine Art studies at the University of Barcelona, after twelve years
of compulsory readings. Once released from such duties, I began to research subjects on my own. By chance,
one day I entered a bookstore in Passeig de Gràcia (Barcelona) to see if I could find something interesting
to read. There I found a manual that caught my attention: Art since 1900, modernity, antimodernity and
postmodernity by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H. Buchloh.
On page 271 the authors began a narrative describing "the artists who had created their museums." The chapter
linked two texts and one artwork: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin;
The museum without walls from the book The voices of silence by André Malraux, and the Boîte-en-valise
by Marcel Duchamp. The latter consisted of a briefcase containing 89 miniature reproductions of Duchamp’s
works and was presented as the first "portable retrospective" of the French artist.
Later, on page 459, they pointed to a second turning point in this narrative: Galerie légitime
(The Legitimate Gallery, 1962-63) created by the French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou, which has been
defined as "an imaginary and portable commercial art gallery" that could be created in the brain of
any person and that took the shape of a hat.
When I was reading about this, suddenly a flood of questions arose in my mind. I wondered if I took
Galerie légitime as a starting point, how could I go a step further? How could I update it?
How could I convert it from modern to contemporary? I considered capturing the Zeitgeist via Facebook,
which, with only three years of existence, was causing a real disruption in the ways of relating and
communicating. The origin of the Davis Museum is therefore in the union of two concepts:
museums created by artists and social networks.
TRR: How do you create a museum?
DL: I thought if Filliou had used so much irony and self-confidence to create an art gallery in a hat,
maybe I could go a step further and create something a bit more absurd or a bit more pompous: a contemporary
art museum in small format.
Davis Lisboa, “Montserrat Soler, retired, Spain”, 2015, digital photography, 2120 x 2120
Question: Do you like the work P.I.N.Q. Park Opening Ceremony by Graham Bell, Tornado?
Why? Answer: Yes, I liked it a lot, because I am very interested in the preservation of nature.
It is very surprising to me to know some people are fighting for nature conservation.
TRR: Why did you decide to do it in a ballot box?
DL:Once I had the mental outline of the Davis Museum, the next step was to choose some
readymade object that would symbolize it. Without any pre-established ideas, I went to a DIY construction
material shop and in the plastics section, I found a methacrylate ballot box measuring just 20 cubic
centimeters, which attracted my attention because of its geometry, brightness, transparency, lightness,
portability, and price. It is important to emphasize that selecting an object as meaningful as a ballot
box had obvious semiotic consequences since it has conditioned all the content of the project, which was
circumscribed around the relationship between art, politics, and social networks.
TRR:How does the museum work?
DL: The Davis Museum is a bit more complex than I'm going to describe here, but simplifying
a lot, it's something like a readymade work, an art practice of Do It Yourself, a collection of contemporary
art, a non-profit cultural entity, and an online digital archive. Broadly, it works as follows:
An artist donates work to the Davis Museum. This piece is recorded for the realization of a video
exhibition (a concept I devised in 2009 that proposes a new way of making art exhibitions through video
art and video-performance). This video exhibition is published on a YouTube channel and is promoted through
a mass email sent to a list of approximately 10,000 people related to the contemporary art world.
While the video exhibition is accumulating views on YouTube, visitors can physically visit The Polling
Station Section, where the physical exhibition of the artist's work is presented.
TRR: Is there an exhibition calendar?
DL: The calendar is a little bit strange, since it does not give specific dates or opening and
closing times, but is governed by the seasons: spring-summer and autumn-winter exhibitions.
TRR: Do you choose the artists or do you get proposals?
DL: I choose artists as much as I accept or reject the proposals that come to me.
TRR: Can it be a group exhibition?
DL: Yes, as long as the set of works doesn’t exceed the available internal exhibition space of
the ballot box, which is 7 x 7 x 7 in (18 x 18 x 18 cm).
TRR: Could I propose, for example, a curatorial activity for the Davis Museum?
DL: In 2010, Irene Pomar and Sthéphani Hab, two curators of contemporary art residing in Paris,
organized a group exhibition entitled Homemade. The artist Francesc Torres also showed interest in curating
a group show. Therefore, you too could do so!
TRR: The museum has a collection of works by well-known artists such as Yoko Ono, Meshac Gaba,
Bill Burns, Francesc Torres, and N.E. Thing Co. (Iain and Ingrid Baxter). It’s a collection that keeps
growing. How did you acquire it?
DL: I suppose this has been possible due to the fact that the project is interesting for the artists,
because it dignifies and diffuses their works, and also because the Davis Museum has emancipatory
strategic content: it is not for profit; it is transparent information, and it is a cultural entity recognized
by the Catalan Government.
TRR: How many pieces are there now?
DL: There are currently 335 works of contemporary art in the collection.
The Polling Station
TRR: It's a very small museum. How does public access it?
DL:The Davis Museum ballot box is the maternal cell of the project, which is exhibited inside
The Polling Station Section of the Davis Museum, a mini artistic installation composed of a platform,
a bench, a velvet curtain, a pedestal, an electric rotating platform, framed embroidery, and a kiosk with an iPad.
This installation can be visited, but it was conceived rather as a place for encounter, dialogue, opinion,
and above all, for visitors to vote and take photographs. It does not have regular hours but is open by appointment.
TRR:The public can vote if they like the piece or not. Can you explain your idea of The Referendum Section?
DL: The Davis Museum was created in a ballot box and must, therefore, make elections and referendums.
The Referendum Section of the Davis Museum is structured around four fundamental constituent components: the work,
the artist, the museum, and the visitor. I conceived of a circuit through which all these elements could relate to each
other. If the museum is a ballot box, the artist is a voter (since his work is a vote of confidence in the project).
The visitor to the exhibition also becomes a voter by choosing "Yes" or a "No" in response to the work in the exhibition.
The results are gathered and bifurcated into sets of data that serve different purposes: the first comprises an online
guestbook and the second set an online count book. The guestbook is used so that any web surfer can know the
visitors' opinions of the work in the show. The counting book records the number of visitors and profiles their gender,
age, origin, and educational level. Later, this data set is sent to the Institut Català de Recerca in Patrimoni Cultural
(Catalan Institute for Research in Cultural Heritage) for the production of statistics. Once the visitor enters
The Polling Station to record his vote and to be photographed, he becomes part of the work.
TRR: Do you think that creates a different relationship between the public and the museum?
DL:I don’t know if this "subversion of roles" is so revolutionary as to alter the ordinary relationship that
still lingers between the public and museums. But this specific relationship in The Referendum Section is particular
to the Davis Museum and I believe it should be preserved.
TRR: O'Doherty, in his book Inside the White Cube (1976), analyzes the exhibition space and states, for example, that:
"With postmodernity, the space of the gallery is no longer neutral. (...) The context provides much of the content of modern
and postmodern art".
Or a little later:
"The white cube is usually seen as a symbol of the artist's estrangement from society, to which the gallery also gives
access. It is a ghetto space, a survival area, a proto-museum with a direct line to timelessness, a set of conditions,
an attitude, a place devoid of location, a reflection in the bare curtain Of the wall, a magic room, a mental concentration,
maybe a mistake. It preserves the possibility of art, but it hinders it. (...) For better or for worse, it is the greatest
convention that has affected art ».
How do you understand the relationship of space as peculiar as the Davis Museum, and so different from the
white cube to the work, to the production of meaning, and to the system of conventions that makes art possible?
DL: My conclusion, after eight years of experience with the Davis Museum, is that the 'white cube'
model Brian O'Doherty describes in Inside the White Cube is still deeply rooted in the collective subconscious.
I have received some negative judgments from artists, teachers, art historians, critics, and visitors who have
been unable to read the Davis Museum as a criticism of the model. But one of the most defining elements
of the project is just that! Some have been very upset that the Davis Museum is so small, that it is in
a ballot box, that the wall is blue, that a blue band is attached to the box, that the box is made of methacrylate,
that it bears the museum’s logo, that the pedestal is in the center, that there is an iPad in the installation,
that there is a vintage curtain, that the metal bar holding the curtain ends on an arrowhead, that The Polling
Station is in my art studio ... in other words, some have trouble accepting that exhibition space is not a white cube!
The Davis Museum is a cube, but it is far from being a neutral geometric form. It is charged with political
intent. The Davis Museum has a bit of white and a lot of blue. And not just any blue, but the Davis
Museum blue, which is the Pantone 647 C (dialogue with Yves Klein is evident). The Davis Museum is mostly
transparent, both literally and figuratively. In the same way that The Referendum Section allows the perfect
infiltration of the visitor into the work, the transparency of the Davis Museum allows the perfect infiltration
of the background into the exhibition of the work. This becomes more evident when video exhibitions are performed
outside, in that what happens in the landscape is a very important layer of meaning. This encounter of the background
with the work can be produced in a harmonic or conflictive way and ends up creating new and unpredictable conceptual
relationships. For this reason, I believe the Davis Museum’s exhibition program is like a kind of diary that
relates direct, unique, and experimental personal experiences.
TRR:The Davis Museum is also exhibited because it is itself a work of art. There is even a performative
element and sometimes you take the museum to other places, but always with the work of another artist exhibited inside.
DL:Exactly. Concepts such as "the museum as a work of art" and "video-performance as an exhibition" are defining
elements of the Davis Museum.
TRR:Are you interested in abolition of traditional categories?
DL:Yes, the abolition of traditional categories and, consequently, the creation of frontier conflicts are two
of the most important elements of my practice, and both are reflected in the Davis Museum.
TRR:Do you think you can maintain a balance between the work and the institution?
Some works from the Davis Museum collection
Francesc Torres, "Not for reading"
Lewis & Taggart, "Terminal Object Nº44"
Bill Burns, "Hou Hanru Hear Us"
Tónia Coll, "LLit"
Álvar Calvet, "Banderines para la fiesta del lugar a la manipulación de los símbolos (variante para el Davis Museum)"
Clarisse Tarran, "Falando con ela II, homenagem a Almodóvar"
"Heads are going to roll", Kim Vose Jones
Images courtesy of artists and the Davis Museum.
DL: This is one of my favorite border conflicts. I think one can and must maintain this ambivalence
between work of art and cultural entity, because it is what makes the Davis Museum unique, even if
it causes annoyance and discomfort for a few artists, visitors, teachers, critics, art historians, and
extreme left-wing protesters.
TRR:Are not you afraid that one devours the other?
DL:I do not fear that the work devours the cultural entity or vice versa. What I fear is being
devoured by some artists, visitors, professors, critics, art historians, and extreme left-wing protesters
who do not understand or accept my artistic proposal (until then, no problem) and have reacted with a
harmful criticism, even with aggression (then yes, there are problems). We have an online graphic document
that exemplifies the museum's problematic as a battlefield: the controversial Indignadas Cube video
exhibition by the artist María María Acha-Kutscher, in which the Davis Museum ballot box was destroyed.
TRR: There are many antecedents of artists' museums. Some that have a program or a collection,
such as Distel's Drawer Museum, the network that Cai Go Quiang has created in different countries.
Others have a more symbolic character, such as those by Broodthaers or Meschac Gaba, or are centered
on a collection of objects by the artist, such as the Mouse Museum by Oldenburg or The Salinas Museum
by Vicente Razo. What sets the Davis Museum apart from other artist museums?
DL: The difference is that the Davis Museum is the first and only museum of contemporary
art created in a ballot box, which we could consider as a "museum of art political party.” And another
difference is that for the first time in history, a readymade sculpture becomes a "work of art/cultural
entity."
TRR:In the introductory text on the museum’s website you talk about "the emergence of independent
museums created by artists to break the monopoly of the great cultural institutions" and "an attempt to
create alternative channels." Is not it paradoxical that the Davis Museum is a cultural entity
recognized by the Generalitat of Catalonia?
Left, tower version of the Davis Museum. Above: video exhibitions: "Indignadas Cube", María María
Acha-Kutscher. "Tomorrow & Yesterday", Miho Shimizu and Oyvind Renberg (Danger Museum). "Air Capsule,
Half-A-Wind Show (Guggenheim Bilbao), Yoko Ono.
DL: Yes, it is paradoxical. The Davis Museum, on the one hand, must be read as a gesture
that refers to a corpus of ideas already existing and accepted – a cultural entity – and, at the same time,
must be placed outside it – an artistic practice of self-management.
TRR: Museums are getting bigger and more expensive, both in terms of buildings and activities.
Are they going in the wrong direction?
DL:According to Andrea Fraser, this is a phenomenon of the early 21st century: the spectacularization of
the great museums, which are true global corporations and which are becoming increasingly competitive due to the
pressure of the art markets. They propose a kind of museum art, in this sense, an official art, for masses of
visitors. It is a model in which there are many economic interests at stake and is just the opposite of the
Davis Museum.
At the Spanish level, the situation is different. With the economic crisis since the bursting of the subprime
mortgage bubble, the "golden" era of expensive, extravagant and deficit museums, for example, the Ciutat de les
Arts Ciències de Santiago Calatrava, is over.
The Davis Museum was created at that period. It was founded with the idea of criticizing failed institutional
and capitalist systems. At that time I intended to bring about a change in harmful social values, such as waste and
corruption, and defend austerity and simple and efficient solutions as a model of cultural management.
TRR: Could the Davis Museum be a model for the future: a sustainable, cheap, mobile museum ...?
DL: I will refer again to Andrea Fraser, who believes that the museum of the future will no longer have a
single model and will be fragmented into various complex realities. The museum of the future will not have a building,
nor a monument. It will be a laboratory of ideas, a Gesamtkunstwerk. It will be authentic, imaginative, personal and domestic.
It will be small and portable; mobile, fluid and flexible. It will also be conceptual, expanded and permeable.
It will have an accessible and free digital archive. It will be sustainable and will promote a global dialogue.
It may have contradictory, unconventional, and unstable elements. It will be democratic, participatory,
communitarian, and very committed to the audience. It will be a synergy, a cultural network, an agent for social
change. Is it possible that the Davis Museum has a few of these characteristics?
Davis Museum (il Davis Lisboa Mini-Museo d'Arte Contemporanea) è stato fondato a Barcellona nel 2009, da
Davis Lisboa. Si tratta del più piccolo museo d'arte contemporanea del mondo.
Il museo si concretizza mostrando le opere d'arte della sua collezione in un cubo di vetro acrilico.
Davis Museum ha mostre itineranti presso altri musei, centri culturali e istituzioni, a livello nazionale
e internazionale. La sua missione è quella di produrre e ispirare progetti di artisti emergenti e di fama provenienti
da tutto il mondo. Il suo intento polemico è anche quello di mettere in discussione l'idea stessa di museo.
La RAI - Radiotelevisione Italiana
LABORATORI SOCIAL METROPOLITÀ
UNITAT D'INVESTIGACIÓ – ACCIÓ A SABADELL
Un espacio para las prácticas creativas. Un espacio de encuentro, intercambio de conocimientos y trabajo común
entre propuestas artísticas y sociales. Un espacio abierto para la colaboración. Un laboratorio de ideas y
producción de red local y extralocal. LSM presenta una programación anual de actividades y organiza el ciclo
de micro-residencias Fertilizació Creuada.
DIRECCIÓ DE PROJECTE.
El Laboratori Social Metropolità està ideat i dirigit per Anna Recasens. És un projecte en residència estable
a L'Estruch. Centre de Producció Artística a Sabadell. LSM és un espai d'acció i reflexió per a pràctiques
artístiques i plataformes socials. Amb la col·laboració de NauEstruch, MediaEstruch, Acció Cultural Metropolitana.
CATARINA LEITÃO | DENDROGRAM | TREE-KIT (MINI VERSION) | DAVIS MUSEUM
FEBRUARY 1, 2016 TO THE FUTURE
Data d'inici: 01/02/2016
Data de finalització: 31/05/2016
Localització: Davis Museum
Horari: Visites amb cita prèvia.
Preu: Entrada gratuïta. Visita amb cita prèvia.
Audiència: Públic general
Tipus d'activitat: Exposició
https://catarinaleitao.net/
CATARINA LEITÃO, "Dendrogram | Tree-kit (Mini Version)", 2015, wood, acrylic paint, paper and wire,
variable dimensions, 3,54 x 1,11 x 16,1 in (closed)
Filmed by Rui Pinheiro
Davis Museum
The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona
In my artwork, I investigate the spatial possibilities of drawing. I render relationships between
two-dimensional and three-dimensional space, with a special focus on structures and objects that
collapse/expand, fold/unfold, and that is portable when closed. Intertwined with this research,
I reflect on our relationship with nature and what we define as such, in an increasingly manipulated
and constructed environment, conditioned by culture.
I build portable and nomadic structures that can acquire several configurations and adapt to different
spaces and places. Working in a variety of formats such as large size installations works on paper,
books or fabric works, I incorporate into the work’s narrative the potential of each piece to be
manipulated and transformed.
A work on portability, 3D drawing, stillness/action and the freedom of display
Dendrogram | Tree-kit (Mini Version) was made during the process of creating a large piece titled Dendrogram | Tree-kit.
Dendrogram | Tree-kit is a product of a research on the possibilities of drawing in space. Composed of painted
wood modules, the piece is a three-dimensional drawing that incorporates the effects of light and shadow on
the container’s surfaces — the exhibition space.
Dendrogram is a kit, several pieces that fit into a box or a bag. Its transformed branches may be mounted in a
tent-like fashion. This makes the artwork portable and mutant: it is either closed or open, still or active in
space through the manipulation of its parts by a participant.
The analysis of our relationship with nature and how we have been culturally conditioned to experience it is the
basis from which I have been creating fictional narratives in my artwork. The Dendrogram works developed from
research on a fictitious Botany in which I created new vegetable species in a drawing. The fictional species
were created from the ideas of taming, mimicking, manipulation and hybridization. The artifacts and visual materials
produced are then organized into portable museums.
In the Dendrogram works, the original material of the tree shapes is hidden. Existent tree sticks are altered and
painted into new shapes representing new-formed tree branches. This body of work entangles fact and fiction, organic
and mechanic, natural and artificial, sculpture and drawing.
In the process of creating the Mini Version, born out of this context and the idea of stillness/action, the miniaturization
of a box/container to hold the expanding mini 3D drawing accidentally grew into the shape of a matchbox. Consequently,
the link to Ben Vautier’s Total Art Match-Box (1965) offered a new set of multiple layers necessary to resolve this work,
which was specially created to reside in the Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona Collection.
The portable museum is a free form of the museum. Unconstrained by institutional weight, it is light; it travels, has
no fixed context, and, most importantly, it is endowed with a sense of humor.
Catarina Leitão
April 2016
PROYECTO PINQ DE LA ERRERIA (House of Bent)
Proyecto PINQ de La Erreria
Sábado, 18:30 h IVAM LAB
28 Mayo 2016
GRATUITO
Proyecto realizado por Graham Bell Tornado en colaboración con la Erreria (House of Bent).
Consiste en establecer una red de Parques Pos Natural Industrial Queer para la conservación de la diversidad en el sentido
amplio de diversidad biológica y cultural.
Sitios abandonados, naves, solares, etc donde han rebrotado las plantas autóctonas (o no autóctonas) y han vuelto los otros
componentes del ecosistema – insectos, pájaros, mamíferos etc – deberían de estar protegidos por ley, como espacios de interés
científico por la fuerza de adaptación de los especies a estos lugares medio tóxicos, que hemos dejado abandonado como heridas
abiertas en nuestro paisaje.
El primer Parque P.I.N.Q. se inauguró en Valencia el 21 de diciembre 2013, día del solsticio invernal, con una ceremonia
participativo y abierto al publico que reclamó un solar abandonado por todxs lxs que “han sido desterrado de sus tierras,
los cuirs porque no encajan, las mujeres porque tiene que quedarse en casa, los tribus para que las corporaciones pueden
robar sus terrenos, y los animales porque sencillamente no hay espacio por ellos”: Yace entre un parque recién creado con
unos apartamentos de lujo y el nuevo Bioparc, todo construido en terrenos que antes formaron parte de la mítica huerta valenciana.
El segundo Parque P.I.N.Q. (Barcelona) ha sido inaugurado por el Chamán TravestiGeyserbird el 22 de Febrero 2014 en
colaboración con Davis Museum -“el museo de arte contemporáneo mas pequeño del mundo ” en otro espacio abandonado
dentro del recinto del centro cultural Hangar en Barcelona. Quemamos la ley sobre biodiversidad que tanto se ignora en
la planificación urbanística en España, donde no existen cinturones verdes en las ciudades.
El tercer P.I.N.Q. Parque (Madrid) abrió el día 17 de Abril, 2015 en la Neomudejar de Atocha un espacio de arte situado en
una nave previamente en desuso de la RENFE. La ceremonia de apertura coincidió con el Día Internacional de la Lucha Campesina
y formó parte de la performance Cabaritual 2.0/15
El cuarto P.I.N.Q. Parc (Velluters) se abrió el día 24 de octubre con celebraciones a lo largo de dos días. El espacio elegido
es un solar en el casco antiguo de Valencia, donde estamos esperando que el ayuntamiento nos ceden un solar como huerta urbana.
Hicimos dos pasacalles con los vecinos del barrio y personas queers, trans y ageneros afines al proyecto.
En está ocasión, el proyecto se realizará en el solar del IVAM.
MÖBIUS | Øyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu
COVER
Möbius is a catalog made to accompany the exhibition by Miho Shimizu & Øyvind Renberg at Damsgård in Norway.
The book presents a larger body of work leading to Möbius, produced in response to travels along the West coast of Norway,
as well as the Damsgård manor.
Published by Miho Shimizu and Øyvind Renberg in collaboration with Hordaland Kunstsenter
2016, Bergen, Norway, Arts Council Norway.
PAGE 14-15
Tomorrow & Yesterday, cylinder seal, polyurethane resin, commission for the Davis Museum, 2012.
Tomorrow & Yesterday uses the form of engraved cylinder seals from ancient Mesopotamia. Cylinder seals are rolled on wet
clay to impress a picture in relief. By rolling continuously, our relief proposes an endless cycle of interaction of a bird,
an egg and a hunter.
212. Miho Shimizu & Øyvind Renberg (Danger Museum), stills from a video about Tomorrow & Yesterday by Davis Lisboa, Barcelona, Spain, 2013.
Möbius is a catalog made to accompany the exhibition by Miho Shimizu & Øyvind Renberg at Damsgård in Norway. The book presents
a larger body of work leading to Möbius, produced in response to travels along the West coast of Norway, as well as the Damsgård manor.
Published by Miho Shimizu and Øyvind Renberg in collaboration with Hordaland Kunstsenter
2016, Bergen, Norway, Arts Council Norway.
PAGE 25-26, Index
Möbius is a catalog made to accompany the exhibition by Miho Shimizu & Øyvind Renberg at Damsgård in Norway. The book presents a
larger body of work leading to Möbius, produced in response to travels along the West coast of Norway, as well as the Damsgård manor.
Published by Miho Shimizu and Øyvind Renberg in collaboration with Hordaland Kunstsenter
2016, Bergen, Norway, Arts Council Norway.
ART TAILOR-MADE TO PEOPLE
Accustomed to spectacle and business, ventures never fail to surprise, which humbly help to re-establish closeness and dialogue
between the work and the spectator.
El Pulso
By Emma Rodríguez 8 Dec 2015
Accustomed to art as a spectacle and business, in which creators are valued based on their market price and their command of
marketing; familiarised with the idea of collecting as a thing of millionaires and used to big formats and striking installations,
we never fail to be surprised by ventures that humbly help to re-establish closeness, dialogue between the spectator and the work.
These are initiatives where what is important isn’t an investment, but rather creativity, experimentation, teamwork, the impact of
what’s different. A gallery inside an abandoned telephone booth in the Jewish neighbourhood of the Cáceres town of Hervás, dedicated
to displaying photos taken with mobile devices; an object-magazine, Paper Engomado (Gummed Paper), devised by the artists of
the Centro de Arte La Regenta in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where the creators make works so tiny they fit in a cigarette pack; a
dollhouse, the Fundación Newcastle, located in Murcia, at the address of the ex-gallery owner Javier Castro-Flórez, which houses
displays in a miniature format; a glass urn as a symbol of the Davis Museum of Contemporary Art, founded by Brazilian artist
Davis Lisboa, with offices in Barcelona and recognised by the Autonomous Government of Catalonia as one of the 500 cultural institutions
of Catalonia. “We stand before closer, more intimate, more sustainable and more creatively authentic ways to circulate art. It is a
sign of our times, of its tensions, contradictions, and quests”, claims Nicola Mariani, critic, curator and author of a blog regarding
the world of emerging art, who points to the duality between the commercial and the alternative; coming together and breaking apart;
repetition and innovation, a confrontation that for decades has dominated the artistic world and which today has special relevance
due to the crisis and the change we are going through.
Mariani takes about “a less elitist and bombastic art, more in tune with people’s real lives, with the present”: A more democratic act,
tailored to the common folk. “You don’t need to be rich to be surrounded by treasures. There is a certain poetic justice in that many
who have money end up buying horrible things”, says Javier Castro, creator of the Fundación Newcastle. “An island of resistance in the
tsunami of the art space” is how Davis Lisboa defines the portable methacrylate cube that houses a single piece per project and which
serves as a façade to an intense expository task.
Transgression through game, through reflection, is the objective of Papel Engomado, eight numbers thus far, eight packs of nicotine-free
cigarettes, but full of small and stimulating playful constructions that the participants create from a theme (capitalism, surveillance,
dinner as a place of exchange...) and that seduce you with a circle of faithful buyers for less than five euros (the money is to pay for
each number and the production of the pieces).
We talk about rebel art, huggable art, art capable of surpassing convention. “We seize the every day and simplicity of life; in some way,
it saves us”, writes Josep Maria Esquirol in his essay La resistencia íntima (The private resistance), where, against the extraordinary,
he advises that we appreciate “what is simple and plain” because it could be “the most sublime of all”. His words match the spirit of these
projects set up with little means and a lot of enthusiasm, using donations, and fun participation methods, including crowdfunding campaigns.
Projects along the path of Marcel Duchamp and his Boîte-en-valise, that box containing miniature works of art, that legendary portable museum.
El País Semanal, El País, Emma Rodríguez, number 2.045, Sunday, December 6th, de 2015, Ediciones El País, Grupo Prisa, Madrid, Spain, page 13.
DAVIS LISBOA ANSWERS THE FAMOUS MARCEL PROUST QUESTIONNAIRE
by Davos Lievitja
“Q: What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? A: Unable to pay the bills.”
In the 1880s, long before he claimed his status as one of the greatest authors of all time, teenage Marcel Proust (July 10, 1871–November 18, 1922)
filled out an English-language questionnaire given to him by his friend Antoinette, the daughter of France’s then-president, as part of her
“confession album” — a Victorian version of today’s popular personality tests, designed to reveal the answerer’s tastes, aspirations, and sensibility
in a series of simple questions. Proust’s original manuscript, titled “by Marcel Proust himself,” wasn’t discovered until 1924, two years after his death.
Decades later, the French television host Bernard Pivot, whose work inspired James Lipton’s Inside the Actor’s Studio, saw in the questionnaire an excellent
lubricant for his interviews and began administering it to his guests in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1993, Vanity Fair resurrected the tradition and started
publishing various public figures’ answers to the Proust Questionnaire on the last page of each issue.
In 2009, the magazine released Vanity Fair’s Proust Questionnaire: 101 Luminaries Ponder Love, Death, Happiness, and the Meaning of Life (public library)
— a charming compendium featuring answers by such cultural icons as Jane Goodall, Allen Ginsberg, Hedy Lamarr, Gore Vidal, Julia Child, Joan Didion, and David Bowie.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
A day on a tropical beach.
What is your most marked characteristic?
Creativity.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Create the Davis Museum, The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona and exhibit it in Arnolfini, Bristol in 2011 beside the
Marcel Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise, the Robert Filliou's La galerie légitime and the Marcel Broodthaers's the Musée d'Art Moderne,
Département des Aigles.
What is your greatest fear?
Go ape.
What historical figure do you most identify with?
Marcel Broodthaers.
Which living person do you most admire?
Meschac Gaba.
Who are your heroes in real life?
Great artists.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Egocentricity.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Indifference.
What is your favorite journey?
br
To a tropical beach.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Being a millionaire.
Which word or phrases do you most overuse?
“OMG!”
What is your greatest regret?
Choose Spain to live, not the USA.
What is your current state of mind?
Browsing.
If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
Distance.
What is your most treasured possession?
The Davis Museum ballot box.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Unable to pay the bills.
Where would you like to live?
New York, London or Paris.
What is your favorite occupation?
Take a macchiato while reading the press.
What is the quality you most like in a man?
Creativity.
What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Beauty.
What are your favorite names?
Marcel, Duchamp, and Broodthaers.
What is your motto?
"The market is a tsunami and it will swallow anything it encounters on its way, while the Davis Museum remains an island of resistance."
Barcelona, January 5, 2015.
CONTRE COUP L'autre actualité de l'art
13 DEC, 2014
ART - ART ET ÉCONOMIE - EN
Davis Lisboa | Davis Museum | Rose Marie Barrientos | Critical Companies | BTV | Barcelona Televisió
from Davis Lisboa on Vimeo
Davis Museum | The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona, was founded on Facebook in 2009, is the first and unique
contemporary art museum created in a ballot box, with its own permanent contemporary art collection. It is also a ready-made sculpture and
collective work of art. It is a non-profit artistic project that organizes and produces exhibitions, encourages research and promotes contemporary
art exhibitions.
The Davis Museum has traveling exhibitions to other cultural centers, museums, and institutions, nationally and internationally, while
generating debate, thought and reflection. Its mission is the selection, presentation, study, dissemination, and preservation of contemporary
art by emerging and renowned artists from around the world.
Davis Lisboa (São Paulo, Brazil, 1965), installation view of The Polling Station Section From Davis Museum, 2009-2014, plexiglass ballot
box, vinyl and mirror; wood pedestal and box; rotating base, catenary and rope; curtain; framed digital print on paper; iPad kiosk; stool; painted
wall and stage. Height: 65,75 in (167 cm); width 53,5 in (136 cm); depth 20,86 in (53 cm).
EL SOL | DAVIS MUSEUM, THE SMALLEST MUSEUM IN THE WORLD
It is the smallest museum in the world, the work of the Spanish-Brazilian artist Davis Lisboa. Measuring only twenty cubic centimeters in length,
it is located in the show-room of the home of its creator, an advertising illustrator based in Barcelona.
This miniaturist museum, which was first founded on Facebook in 2009 and appears in the official guides of the museums of the institutions of
Barcelona, “is a non-profit project that organizes and produces both virtual and physical exhibitions, encourages the research, and promotes
contemporary art exhibitions, with his own permanent art exhibition”, ensures to EFE Davis Lisboa, its creator. Its mission is "the selection,
presentation, study, dissemination and preservation of contemporary art by emerging and renowned artists from around the world, as well as
making traveling exhibitions to other cultural centers to generate debate, thought and reflection," emphasizes Davis Lisboa, which already has
a collection of 106 works.
Designed as an upside-down ballot box, "because each work that the artist donates to the museum is like a vote and, as the ballot box is mine,
each vote is a new piece of the collection for the Museum." The essential condition for exhibiting the works, in addition to quality, is that
they fit into this 20 x 20 x 20 centimeter acrylic and methacrylate receptacle. “I have transformed a voting ballot box into art, into something
sacred. Fifteen artists with international quality works have already exhibited in it, which are exhibited for around four months, such as the
three current tablets by the Catalan artist Antoni Socías ”, says an excited Davis Lisboa.
After twelve years of study of the Fine Arts career at the Sant Jordi School in Barcelona, Davis Lisboa discovered a fascinating book on Art History,
entitled Art since 1900 and, after getting into Marcel Duchamp's Boite-en valise, of 1935, and in Robert Fillou's Gallerie Legitime of 1962,
two works with a scathing institutional criticism, he had an "inspiration", what he describes as a "cascade of ideas". “I jumped out of my chair,
because I considered that these artists were the precursors of what would later become my Davis Museum, a space in keeping with the 21st century,
a museum applicable to social networks, to Facebook: it was as if my light bulb turned on, an intuition”, expressed Lisboa
THE DAVIS MUSEUM, IN BRISTOL. Although the crisis has affected the subsidies that this peculiar museum could obtain during the last two years,
its creator is satisfied that the Bristol cultural center has just contacted him to take his museum there, from 20 to 24 of September 2011, for which
he is planning the project and the selection of the 36 works he intends to exhibit.
The intention of the Davis Museum , since it was founded in January 2009, is to launch a physical and virtual social project, a collective
work of art with small-format pieces donated by the artists. This museum aims to be a non-profit project, if the economic situation allows it,
"because the artists' works are not for sale, we are not an art gallery, but a museum, and a museum never sells," remarks Davis Lisboa.
Regarding the benefits that artists obtain from their donation, Lisboa points out that “it will be the visibility of the work in the global network
of the art and approximately six thousand submissions to people related to the world of visual arts”. AN ISLAND OF RESISTANCE. For artists interested
in exhibiting at the Davis Museum, its creator ensures that the criteria of art quality are followed in all its disciplines, with the only
limitation of 20 cubic centimeters of measurement and with a certain preference for those who already have a work exhibited in a museum,
even if it is not decisive.
Those interested can write an email to info@davismuseum.com. The motto of this peculiar museum devised by its creator is that "the market is a 'tsunami'
that swallows everything that lies ahead and the DM is an island of resistance." An island of resistance that can be contemplated for the moment in the
own home of its creator, but that has also had its headquarters in Second Life, in traveling exhibitions to other cultural and institutional centers and
that will move to the cultural center of Bristol when it turns out two years and nine months, in which he will celebrate his coming of age.
INTERVIEW: DAVIS LISBOA, head of the DAVIS MUSEUM Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona.
Founded on Facebook in 2009, it is the first and only contemporary art museum created in an urn, with its own permanent contemporary art collection.
It is also a ready-made sculpture and collective work of art. It is a non-profit artistic project that organizes and produces exhibitions, encourages
research and promotes contemporary art exhibitions.
The Davis Museum makes traveling exhibitions to other cultural centers, museums and institutions, national and international, while debating,
thinking and reflecting. Its mission is the selection, presentation, study, dissemination and preservation of contemporary art by emerging and renowned
artists from around the world.
Rosa Pérez, Fluido Rosa, Radio 3, RNE, Radio Nacional de España. Friday, December 12, 2014
THE TINIEST ART MUSEUM DOES EXIST AND IS TO BE FOUND IN BARCELONA
Rebel and enter - if you can!
Art has been a victim of an institutional and commercial kidnap for years now. Davis Lisboa, an artist from Brazil, decided for a change and
to fight from the inside. So, he opened the world's smallest contemporary art museum a floor above his apartment, inside a receptacle, an actual
ballot-box that voters use on election days. The box even conserves the slot. To enjoy a visit to the exhibitions inside the transparent methacrylate
box, you need to phone Davis Lisboa's home number or get an appointment through Facebook. Once there, you will be received and guided to the museum
by Davis Lisboa himself. Or rather, accompanied to stand in front of the museum, which you will only be able to see but not enter into, owing to the
obvious constraint: size.
At present, an exhibit of a Yoko Ono art piece of a couple of centimeters is hosted. It resembles an Easter egg, transparent and about 5 cm in size,
with a caption we are not going to give away, only to keep the surprise for the future visitor. And paying a visit to the Davis Lisboa Museum is
certainly an experience in itself. In spite of its size, its a must see to believe it.
This is one of the few museums in the world which not only can be held in one hand but can also be transported. It is portable, so Davis Lisboa can
take it wherever he wants to or is invited to, that is, apart from being stationed in his apartment, it can be in any other place such as another museum,
the beach or in a forest.
With all this, Davis Lisboa aims at making us reconsider our perception of what art and museums are, including our relationship with the works of art
as spectators and even our view on life. But this scheme is not strictly limited to the dimension of the art scene. Davis Lisboa has a lot more:
close tights with Facebook (a major part of his artistic activity is done through this social media in order to link with the world and other artists
in the first place), comic strips also published on Facebook through which DavisLisboa talks about his museum and the world of art in general.
To sum up, the Davis Lisboa Museum is today an unusual display full of subtlety, a minuscule but free space whose room, the size of a box, is a genuine
image of the current state of contemporary art in Europe and the world. Also, a show of desire for a determined artistic expression of even the smallest
dimensions no matter where. An impulse to express and depict the life that cannot be stifled.
Carlo Padial, PlayGround Magazine, by Carlo Padial, Wednesday, November 19th, 2014.
THE DAVIS MUSEUM OF DAVIS LISBOA, THE WORLD'S SMALLEST MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART
Friday, December 12, 2014
DAVIS INTUITIVE MUSEUM
Davis Lisboa,Davis Intuitive Museum (full mini-installation), 2014, plexiglas ballot box, vinyl, and painted plastic, 7,8 x 7,8 x 7,8 in
The Davis Museum has been expanding itself with the creation of new Sections. These groups of works are created by Davis Museum
founder, Davis Lisboa. Section titles include The Screen Shots, The Embroideries, The Sounds, The Visitors, The Stamps, and The Sculpture Section.
This work, Intuitive Davis Museum, is from The Sculpture Section and is created for the exhibition Eleven: The John Erickson Museum of Art
10 Year Retrospective, at the Harn Museum. The piece is an assemblage made with a Davis Museum ballot box. The interior of the box contains
two models, a brain, and a top hat painted in blue on a mirror base. These elements combine to raise questions about the nature of institutional critique,
kitsch, and appropriation and how their relationship with one another.
Is it possible to create an "imaginary collective exhibition" with artists such as François Curlet (the “Intuitive” concept), Katharina Fritsch (brain),
Robert Filliou (top hat), Yves Klein (IKB) and Michelangelo Pistoletto (mirror) at the Davis Museum? How can these visual signs be interconnected
most synthetically? Why is conceptual art considered the highest form of contemporary art? What is the relationship between the souvenir and institutional critique?
Davos Lievitja, Harn Museum of Art, Florida, USA. August, 2014.
MUSEOS DE ARTISTA (APROPIACIÓN INSTITUCIONAL)
por Tomás Ruiz-Rivas
The Davis Museum claims to be the smallest museum in the world: 20 x 20 x 20 centimeters. Founded in Barcelona in 2009 by the Brazilian Davis Lisboa,
it has a regular program of exhibitions, a collection and is also, as a small methacrylate artifact, an exhibition object in other spaces. This condition allows
it to travel internationally, including exhibitions, and visit other museums and art centers. Its author-director also activates it in public spaces through
performances, causing discrepancies and dialectics with conventional institutions.
Tired of large formats and huge, engulfing museums? Do you think the exhibition hall is an old model? Does the White Cube theory seem
outdated? Well, this post may interest you!
More and more voices are distancing themselves from the Brian O'Doherty's model of “White Cube” as an optimal exhibition space, presented in his
essay Inside the white cube (1976), where he affirmed that “the ideal gallery, subtracts from the work of art anything that might interfere
with the fact that it is "art." The work is isolated from everything that could be detrimental to the evaluation of itself […] White cube
is conceived as a place free of context, where it was thought to exclude time and social space from the experience with works of art… ”.
In recent years, interesting proposals have begun to emerge to innovate in this aspect and take art to places that seemed alien to the art system:
from the domestic sphere, the virtual world, urban spaces and other singular spaces.
There are a series of exhibition spaces that are very curious due to their dimensions, they are very small, tiny, that make art a different experience
and not for that reason of less intensity. Some of the examples that we can find in this sense have been emerging in recent years and here we select five:
Clutch Gallery, Newcastle Foundation, The Medicine Cabinet, Davis Museum and Minuscule Gallery.
We must start by saying that there are important precedents in this aspect, such as the Boîte-en-valise (1936-1941) by Marcel Duchamp, a portable
retrospective of his work reduced to the size of a suitcase. Or also La Galerie légitime (1962) by Robert Filliou, which was born as a critique of
the institution within the Fluxus framework, which is about the artist's bowler hat that contained manufactured objects, notes and photographic images of
his works and those of other artists who wanted to be part of that exhibition in motion.
Today we can see the influence of these initiatives in the Clutch Gallery project (Chicago), a 60 cm2 space inside Meg Duguid's briefcase,
which is currently being moved by Georgina Valverde as the headquarters of the Society of Smallness. The gallery is dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary
art in all its expressive mediums. It opened in December 2009 with a previous program, but as of 2011 the project began to pass through the hands of different
curators. This will continue to function until the case wears out from daily use. The way for viewers to see the exhibition is to find out where the
Clutch Gallery is through their Facebook and also by requesting an appointment.
The Newcastle Foundation (Murcia) was born at the end of March in a dollhouse of the Chaves brand, Newcastle model 38061 (34x40x75 cm) that was inside
the Javier Castro house. This initiative arises through the illusion of creating a space to disseminate Spanish contemporary art and demonstrate that these types
of formats are just as legitimate to develop an interesting artistic project and that it involves other agents through, for example, modest scholarships of collaboration.
A dollhouse is now an effective space to promote and disseminate the work of Spanish artists.
The Medicine Cabinet (Chicago) is a project started in 2008. It is a medicine cabinet located in the bathroom of Christopher Smith's home that serves as an
exhibition space, where every month they pass through his small shelves the works of different artists. Since this initiative, other marginal spaces in this home have
also become places of art.
The Davis Museum (Barcelona) takes this idea of minimal space to the museum field. The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art was founded in 2009
on Facebook, and claims to be the smallest museum in the world, with its own collection of contemporary art. Its mission is the selection, study and dissemination of works
of emerging and renowned artists, taking their works to different countries through its traveling exhibitions.
The Minuscule Gallery (Logroño), for its part, was born "discarding conventions that limit creation, using different materials, new supports at no cost, with cost
and easy access." It is located in a discreet window (85 × 106 cm) at the foot of Calle Primo de Rivera, where it functions as a showcase to show small collective and
individual exhibitions, where all media and disciplines are worked on. A parenthesis for contemporary art that pedestrians come across.
As we can see, the possibilities in terms of models for the exhibition and dissemination of art are infinite, and may lead to interesting projects that transgress the norm
and exhibition conventions. New models that show us that things can continue to be done even with little means and that the greatest or the most presumptuous does not have
to be the best.
A 20 square centimeter museum in an acrylic glass ballot box hosted in Puigmartí street. This is the Davis Museum, the smallest to be known and recognized by the
Generalitat. This “low cost” space, a description its creator uses, is portable and has already exhibited works in various cities worldwide.
With over 240 pieces of art comprising its permanent collection, the museum was born in 2009 through an Internet initiative. The project kicked off when Davis Lisboa,
the museum's creator, polled the art community whether they felt the need for a new kind of museum to be made, one that would be distinct from mainstream centers of art.
With this initiative, Davis aims to tie criticisms of cultural establishments and the economy, a reason for which, he explains, he wanted to set up a small breathing
spot in the middle of the capitalism of our time.
A 20 square centimeter surface area. Such are the dimensions of the world's smallest contemporary art museum. This is the Davis Museum found in Puigmartí street,
a recognized center by the Generalitat of Catalonia. This acrylic glass receptacle has hosted more than 240 works of art as part of its permanent collection. Born from
the creation of Davis Lisboa, a Brazilian illustrator who embarked on moving away from major art centers and built a new museum which in turn is a work of art itself.
DAVIS LISBOA, the mastermind of the Davis Museum says “The idea at the beginning was to survey artists worldwide to see if they were in favor of creating a museum,
and so it was a kind of an 'online' proposal, and that's why the Davis Museum is, in reality, a ballot box, instead of just being a simple box, it is rather a work
of art whose message is a call for the creation of a new concept of a museum” At present the museum has a display of miniature works of art titled “Critical companies”.
This artistic project, in particular, has over 100 pieces that tackle art and economy. The artists create companies and think up objects linked to corporate products.
Such as a new universal African coin, for example. ROSE MARIE BARRIENTOS, art historian comments “The pieces I have brought along are precisely a form of advertisement
of the companies, because we mustn't forget that the companies are works of art themselves, that is, just like the Davis Museum was born as a work of art, so are
these companies artworks themselves the same way, and then they create a bunch of smaller objects as a way of self-advertisement”. The creator of the Davis Museum
looks on the museum as a hall of resistance amid the tumult of the market of art. He speaks of being like a place to breathe some oxygen in a capitalist reality.
The next exhibit on show is a work of Yoko Ono titled “Imagine peace”.
Aitana Molina and Neus Valls, BTV, Barcelona Televisió. March 19th, 2014.
Anna Clawson & Nicole Ward's new exhibition, Overdubbed Scenes opened on Friday at CRATE in Margate. The exhibition is the fifth in a series of week-long shows
in which CRATE have asked artists to respond to the very particular and miniature exhibition space of the Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona,
which is currently in residence at CRATE for six weeks.
The Davis Museum was created in 2009 by Brazilian artist, Davis Lisboa, as an attempt to provide an alternative environment and structure for artists to exhibit
within, an approx 8” by 8” by 8” clear acrylic box as opposed to the monolithic institutions that our art world and market holds as the goal for artists - MOMA, Guggenheim,
Tate. The Davis Museum also provides an alternative currency for the exchange of commissions and artworks made for its institution with artworks often donated to the
Museum after their exhibition and held in the permanent collection in Barcelona to be take out as and when needed in the various solo and group projects the Museum is
invited to participate in. The artworks take the duel role of having the scale and portability of an edition whilst retaining the form of an individual artwork.
The current Museum installation in Margate of the Davis Museum consists of the 'museum' box which sits atop a white plinth, a flag which states the Museum's goal
as an 'island of resistance' to the 'tsunami' of the art market (laid out like a facebook page and status update which alludes to the Museum's origins as a non-physical
space), an iPad which displays a looped history of the Davis Museum's exhibitions and a poster. Each artist that has been invited to respond to the Museum in
Margate was asked to use the components of the Museum as they saw fit. The exhibitions so far at the Museum at CRATE have included a small paper model by Canadian artist
Bill Burns, a television and shirt owned by Andy Warhol, Romanian artist Betts Robinson and an installation based on the subterranean sites of Margate by Bridgette Ashton.
Working mainly with print, sculpture and photography in their practice, Clawson & Ward have chosen to create new work in response to the Davis Museum's format of
display in an installation they call Overdubbed Scenes which hints at the malleable nature of museum collections. This malleability refers to the continuous
re-contextualization of an exhibit or archive. During this translation, the archive’s content is susceptible to a range of influences including; public opinion, capital,
and changes to the political landscape. The miniature sculptural work that the artists produced takes the form of cut-outs based on architectural forms. Applying the
methods used to re-animate and promote a collection by using small plastic suction cups to attach the printed sculptural work to the Davis Museum, Clawson & Ward
refer to low-fi products produced solely for disposable merchandising. Using the Davis Museum iPad and incorporating the crop editing tool, the artists use a
single photographic snapshot, one of the women in red outside the Soviet Commissioned Ninth Fort Memorial to the Holocaust in Kaunas, Lithuania, to provide the backdrop
to the exhibition. The women, some in hotpants, were captured on a photoshoot during the artist's visit the memorial site. The incongruous nature of their usage of the
memorial site as a fashion location as opposed to a site of reflection or remembrance, make the lack of context to the photograph even more startling. The true meaning,
like a lot of Clawson & Ward's work, is buried underneath layers of complexity and abstraction and must be carefully unpicked.
The next and last exhibition at the Davis Museum/CRATE will be a video and model installation by Benedict Drew called The Concha Institute. The work tells
the, often trippy and dream-like story, of a man who has nasal trouble only to find out he has a museum of contemporary sculpture stuck up his nose.
Sacha Waldron, curator at Crate.
2013, Margate, United Kingdom.
Overdubbed Scenes by Anna Clawson& Nicole Ward runs until October 4 2013. The Concha Institute by Benedict Drew opens on October 4th and runs until October 12th 2013.
Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Broodthaers; Claes Oldenburg; Herbert Distel; Daniel Spoerri; Vicente Razo; Meschac Gaba; Cambalache; Antoni Miralda; Cai Gou-Qiang;
Sandra Gamarra; Filip Noterdaeme; Giuseppe Campuzano; Thomas Hirschhorn; Tom Lavin; Museo Aerosolar; Jaime Iregui; Davis Lisboa; Sean Miller; MIAxM; Left Hand Rotation;
Alicia Herrero; Eder Castillo
Curator: Tomás Ruiz-Rivas
Collaborations: (they are on the way...)
Find that in next VALF issue
VALF – visual arts latino freezine – is a free print magazine, specialized in contemporary art and visual culture content.
From January 2014 in D.F. and New York City
see all distribution + + +
Informatiu Museus » Barcelona. El Davis Museum, un petit gran museu
Generalitat de Catalunya
20 SETEMBRE 2013
Barcelona. El Davis Museum, un petit gran museu
The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art, amb seu visitable al carrer Puigmartí de Barcelona, és per definició el
museu d’art contemporani més petit del món.
URNA | SE ME HA CAÍDO EL DICCIONARIO | IRENE POMAR
Una palabra donada por Davis Lisboa
urna.
(Del lat. urna).
1. f. Arca que sirve para depositar las cédulas, números o papeletas en los sorteos y en las votaciones secretas.
2. f. Caja de cristales planos a propósito para tener dentro visibles y resguardados del polvo efigies u otros objetos preciosos.
3. f. Caja de metal, piedra u otra materia, que sirve para varios usos, como guardar dinero, los restos o las cenizas de los cadáveres humanos, etc.
4. f. Medida antigua para líquidos.
br
5. f. Ven. ataúd (? para enterrar un cadáver).
URN | I HAVE DROPPED THE DICTIONARY | IRENE POMAR
A word donated by Davis Lisboa
urn
1. A large or decorated vase.
2. A vase for holding the ashes of a person's cremated body.
3. A large metal container with a spout, used for making or serving tea or coffee in large amounts.
4. The spore-bearing part of the capsule of a moss, between lid and seta.
“It’s a transparent plexiglass box merely a form?
Doesn't it become content as soon as we put newspaper ashes inside it?”
Chen Zhen, 1990
Alluding to his work Le Poids/Le Vide, 1990
Davis Lisboa, Museum 9 from the Portable Network Museum Section 2013, digital screenshot, 13,3 x 7,4 in.
The Anthropophagous Museum of Contemporary Art Davis Museum Barcelona is an urn of 20 cubic centimeters. An object that contains
processes of which it is also a part, thus dissolving its nature as a container in the game of proposals and counterproposals to which that
element called “urn” invites.
Enjoy the neutrality of the Ready made object and its qualitative leap beyond dualism and symbolism. It generates a new space, a museum with
a collection and visitors, having constant action as a fundamental characteristic. Therefore, the Davis Museum is a new device that
acts and experiences, in which the viewer enters and the donated works of art are exhibited, thus creating a feedback game: a collective
action that adopts all the available means, physical and virtual.
The presentation of the Davis Museum Barcelona at the LACDA (Los Angeles Center For Digital Art) is an unprecedented opportunity to
discover a collection consisting of works by 15 international artists such as María Cañas, Chen Ping, PSJM among others. An opportunity to
experience this process up close, which adds a new value to the notion of the format. A mini-museum that swallows past and contemporary
proposals and gives rise to a new movement that assumes its sources, absorbs them and escapes the tempting dialectic of art history, allowing
the potential of a transparent urn to give way to new intuitions.
Text by Irene Pomar for the Davis Museum in the framework of the exhibition at LACDA, 2009
by Roberta Bosco and Stefano Caldana | 16 September 2013
The Davis Museum, The Davis Museum by Davis Lisboa, the world’s tiniest museum of contemporary art.
It has been referred to as a liquid museum on the Web, but it is also a center with a physical address recognized by the Government of Catalonia
(Generalitat de Catalunya) that you can visit in Barcelona in Carrer de Puigmartí. We are talking about the Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art,
by definition today's smallest contemporary art museum around the world. Not only is it a mobile museum, but it can display works of art and activities
wherever its director pleases.
Experimental, portable, open, flexible and low-cost, the Davis Museum, bearing the name of its creator, has no limits in terms of where to travel
to display or what artists to work with. These can be “culture centers, galleries, museums, private showrooms, streets, and parks” – explains to Silicio
the Brazilian born Barcelona resident Davis Lisboa (São Paulo, 1965), director of the museum founded in 2009.
Even though at first glance everything seems to be concentrated in a 20 cubic centimeter acrylic glass ballot-box, Lisboa defines his creation nothing
less than “an island of resistance amid the market tsunami of art.”
In the past years, Lisboa has brought together a permanent collection of about 230 donated-only pieces of art of various kinds such as paintings, sculptures,
videos and new media forms that are usually installed and physically displayed in his studio in Barcelona. That being said, how can you name a 20 cubic
centimeter acrylic glass ballot-box a museum, where you can only display one piece of art at a time? Perhaps a more accurate approach than calling it a museum
could be looking at the project as a work of art in itself, even though the Government of Catalonia makes no such distinction, and catalogs the Davis Museum
as one among the 500 registered cultural entities in Catalonia.
“It is only the smallest museum in the world in terms of its display surface dimensions. It is not the array of collections that is limited, but the space the
museum uses for the exhibits. The ancient story of David and Goliath comes alive with the Davis Museum and Barcelona’s MACBA” - points out the founder
with a certain irony, underlining that the Davis Museum is the second contemporary art museum in Barcelona after MACBA.
It would be impossible to name all the pieces of the collection. As an appetizer though, take a look at a video of María Cañas from Seville titled The Toro’s Revenge,
one of the first art donations in the museum from 2009, and also the painting of the young Italian painter Paolo Maggis, a protagonist in a book about the philosophy
of filmmaker Bigas Luna who died prematurely only a couple of months ago.
As far as the new media are concerned, we should highlight Living Drawings, a Hunter Cole's video installation (San Francisco, 1971), based on an image
projection of shapes created by bioluminescent bacteria.
“On the other hand, as a Civil Online Platform for Activism in Visual Arts, the Davis Museum offers an alternative answer of “an indignant” to the existing
cultural structures, and an incentive for a change” - affirms the founder, reminding us that the very structure of the museum bears a strong resemblance to a
ballot-box in itself.
The Davis Museum takes the position of a kind of “art political party”. “If the museum is a ballot-box, then any piece of art displayed is a vote of confidence
towards the Davis Museum”- says Lisboa. It is a democratic form of building a museum: not parting from the established public administration, but born out of
a civil initiative”- continues, speaking in favor of the unity of artists and their common goal to set up a free and independent institution.
Halfway between a social project and a collective art project, the collection of the Davis Museum is open to all artists who are selected based on their
artistic career. It is primarily the format of the piece of art that can generate certain limitations, which is not the case of videos and new forms of media, given
that such works can be presented on a small screen of a mobile device such as an iPhone or an iPad. However, works of the plastic arts to be shown must be of a
smaller size than the physical dimensions of the museum, as they must fit in the acrylic glass display box.
Looking at it from a different angle, the reduced dimensions are a clear advantage at the same time, reflected in the obvious freedom to change places, which makes
the museum growingly popular at the scenes of public international presentations. The participation in the 2011 Museum Show in Bristol's Arnolfini Art Centre
(UK) was a milestone for the Davis Museum, as the mini-museum was awarded for its alternative qualities, singular format, and its exhibits. Prizes at this
show are given for the quality and conceptual relevance of the works of art rather than the number of works exhibited. The Davis Museum took part in the show
along with 40 other museums presenting worldwide artists, including a number of classical pieces that Lisboa himself looks on as principal references for his project
such as Marcel Duchamp's the Boîte-en-valise and the Robert Filliou's Galerie légitime also noted for their sharp institutional criticism.
Hou Hanru Hear Us by Bill Burns, at the "The Survey" expo, CRATE, Margate, UK. Photo: Áine Belton
The Davis Museum is on the road right now, showing its works and making its philosophy known at CRATE, a place of research and support for experimental art
projects in Margate (UK), within the frame of the presentation titled The Survey. The Small, Unusual and Specialist Museums Survey. The Davis Museum
is the only museum invited to this atypical project, the brainchild of curator Sacha Waldron, who has been carrying out a peculiar study of the “art of survey”.
In the demonstration bearing the same name The Survey, Waldron runs a study/survey among the smallest unique and specialized museums around Europe. “Sacha
invited me to team up for this project because the Davis Museum met the requirements to participate at the expo: it is small, unusual and specialized.
So we worked out the survey which is being sent out to 50 museums in each of the 49 European countries, which means a total of 2450 individual museum surveys.”
- explains Lisboa, who opened at CRATE with Quotes Section from the Davis Museum (Unusual Conference), a performance in which he featured as principal character.
More on The Survey, Sacha Waldron points out that this expo marks only the beginning of a work that will take about 12 months to complete and will be summed
up in a study uploaded on the Web in PDF format and a printed book as well.
In the meantime, Davis Lisboa is going to expose in his Polling Station Section (a name coined for the installation made up of the acrylic ballot-box,
the iPad etc. that represents the Davis Museum at this event) the work of art Hou Hanru Hear Us, a subtle hint to the celebrated curators star
in the form of a miniature model, creation of the Canadian artist Bill Burns, which belongs to the permanent collection of the mini-museum in Barcelona.
Burns' art will be exhibited alternately with works of artists such as Andy Warhol, Lenka Clayton, Matthew de Pulford, Paul Hazelton, and some local ones like
Betts Robinson, Victoria Adam, Bridgette Ashton, Nicole Ward, Benedict Drew, Lenka Clayton, Michael Crowe, and Anna Clawson. The Davis Museum offers space
for individual displays, however, whenever there is a chance for works of different artists to be shown side by side harmoniously, we can set up collective displays.
What I usually do, though, is equally distribute the exhibit time among the participating artists. If we have a month to do the entire expo and there are four artists,
each of them gets a week to do their part.” - comments Lisboa.
It is important to note that the Davis Museum keeps close ties with the Internet and social media (Twitter). After all, the Davis Museum was born on the
Web, and as its founder explains “at the beginning it was only an idea, and we used a ballot-box to symbolize it. Then a digital image was created and with that its
corresponding Facebook group came to life.”?“From the moment of getting in touch with artists, the concept of the Davis Museum began to evolve and expand at
the speed of light. The Polling Station Section, a ballot-box of the digital world, is an idea taken precisely from an element on Facebook, which later got
transferred to a tangible physical level, the acrylic glass ballot-box.” - adds Lisboa, pointing out some ties that not only have been a means of spreading the news
and served for promotion but also have been instruments with a cohesive and stabilizing force.
The Davis Museum is in a way a conceptual heir of an artistic tradition originating from Fluxus, characterized by collective creation, diversity, improvisation,
and DIY, which in turn merge in the concept of the museum/social network represented by contemporary artists on Facebook”- mentions the founder. “Fluxus artists work in
an analog way, while we do it online”- explains Lisboa, making it clear that the Davis Museum will soon have a closer relationship with digital creativity.
A portrait of Davis Lisboa, director and founder of the Davis Museum in Barcelona.
As regards the near future, the mini-museum will be set up in the Centro del Carmen of Valencia for the 6th Incubarte International Art Festival, while the medium
and long-term plans include broadening and sorting the works of the collection, and also improving the overall quality. “Among my very long-term plans is the idea of
bringing the project to an end and donating it fully to some contemporary art museum so that the whole artwork may continue to be there for future generations” - he concludes.
Betts Robinson (born in Romania, lives in Mexico) weaves obscure personal narratives with a Fluxus playfulness. Her practice, which normally takes the form of prints and
posters, has for the Davis Museum taken the form of a series of instructions and directions that were sent via email to CRATE. Robinson's instructions all relate
to the particulars of CRATE that was noticed and noted by Robinson during a visit to the space and to Margate in November 2012. For example, the proximity to Kentucky
Fried Chicken and the ubiquitous smell of Colonel Sander's favorite led Robinson to the idea of making the smell of CRATE more homely, more Sunday lunch than late-night
shame-snack.
Robinson's instruction “make CRATE smell like a roast dinner”. With no direct indication of how to do this, many experiments have been carried out over the last few weeks using
perfumed oil diffusers, Bisto, burning Sage stuffing over candles, constructing makeshift candles of our own using chicken skin and long consultations with the butchers of
Margate. The resulting work, has, in the end, had to be realized through the most obvious answer. CRATE is still not sure this will work but, using the gallery's micro-oven, we will try
to roast a chicken during the days of the exhibition.
Robinson often appeals to the physical senses with her work, her most recent body of work was a series of images with complex scratch & sniff elements. For Robinson's
preview at CRATE, she sent the instruction “Limoncello. Hard Boiled Sweets” which references how hard some products are to find in Margate town center and how easy
others. To assault our ears, the videos on the Davis Museum iPad reference her parents'obsession with the Irish singer Enya and their constant infliction of the music on their
children during long car journeys “Enya videos, but only unofficial ones set to landscapes, tourism video's or dolphins”. Other instructions sent were numerous and often,
uncompleteable.
Robinson's response to the Davis Mini Museum environment and CRATE's ongoing Small, Unusual and Specialist Museums Survey project (which you can see growing in the
corridors of CRATE) has been to use the slot at the top of the ballot box (the core of the Davis Museum exhibition space) which is sometimes used to invite
the audience to vote on the exhibitions – good or bad, yes or no. Here, Robinson sent a specially printed Cactus toilet-paper to CRATE alongside the direction “Put
the paper into the Museum, now find the Magical Crystal Garden”. Accompanying this was an address in London which, when CRATE followed Robinson's instructions,
turned out to lead them to Pollocks Toy Museum near Warren Street and in the gift shop, on sale for £7.50, the 'Magical Crystal Garden'. The garden, Alpine chemical
wonderland, takes up to two days to fully grow, emerging over Robinson's exhibition.
CRATE. STUDIOS & PROJECT SPACE
1 Bilton Square, Margate, Kent, CT9 1EE
THE SURVEY/CURRENT EXHIBITIONS The Small, Unusual and Specialist Museums Survey
A collaboration between CRATE and the Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona. The Small, Unusual and Specialist Museums Survey engages with small,
unusual and specialist museums across Europe, CRATE/Davis Museum will also host seven miniature solo exhibitions over Aug/Sep/Oct:
The next miniature exhibition will be Magical Crystal Garden by Betts Robinson. Opening 6 September with Limoncello and roast chicken.
STUDIO ARTISTS/STUDIOS
CRATE currently has seven studio holders.
Charley Vines
Nova Marshall
Benedict Drew
Jeremy Millar
Andrew Marshall
Petra Reid
Tahnee Al-Khalifa
Studios for Rent.
All the studios at CRATE are currently occupied.
If you would like to be contacted when space becomes available please contact admin@cratespace.co.uk
CLICK HERE for more information on prices/ sizes and all the practical stuff.
CRG/CRATE CURATORIAL INTERNSHIP PROGRAMME
Collaborative Research Group (CRG) is an alternative education program. Conceived of as an MA in Doing, it brings together a group of 6 regional arts
practitioners (artists, curators, organizers, writers, researchers, and thinkers) based in Kent who are interested in collaborative working and the
pluralities of contemporary visual art practice (producing, curating, organizing, writing, etc.).
CRG will run from September 2013 until April 2015. For more info on the participants and program CLICK HERE
Curatorial Internship Programme. CRATE is supporting six curatorial internships developed through support from University for the Creative Arts (UCA),
Kent County Council (KCC), Art Council England (ACE) and project partners throughout Kent. Partners include DAD, Strange Cargo, Turner Contemporary,
Whitstable Biennale, Trifarious Projects, Stour Valley Arts.
Find out more about the Interns and the projects CLICK HERE
NEWS
CRATE is currently playing host to the Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona which is running a weekly exhibition program. The first
in the series is Canadian artist Bill Burns who is exhibiting his work Hou Hanru Hear Us. You can see Hou Hanru Hear Us at CRATE until Sunday 1st September.
On our opening night (August 23rd) the mini-museums Director, Davis Lisboa gave a performance conference at CRATE. A video of this will be up soon.
THIS WEEK
This week we launched our new research project, The Small, Unusual and Specialist Museums Survey, which is attempting to catalog and connect with as many small,
unusual and specialist museums in Europe as we can. CRATE is sending out a survey via email and post asking the staff of these museums what they think about their
institutions, their collections, what they think might happen to their museums in the future and how they feel their museums contribute to the cultural life of their area.
This project is ongoing and perhaps impossible but our research starts now and you can see the project as it unfolds on the walls of CRATE throughout August/September.
THE SURVEY
Crate's 2013-14 exhibition and project space program launched in June 2013 with The Survey, curated by Sacha Waldron and running for 18 months.
The survey thematic will be explored through three strands:
Survey as a format for looking at the work of artists – survey shows and their relationship to the solo show, charting artists practice
Survey as a form of mapping - surveying locations, tendencies or forms
Survey as an investigation into administrative formats, evaluation and information gathering.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
The Small, Unusual and Specialist Museums Survey is a collaboration between CRATE and the Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona.
Engaging with over 500 small, unusual and specialist museums across Europe, CRATE/Davis Museum will also host seven miniature solo exhibitions over Aug/Sep/Oct
TBC, Anna Clawson/Nicole Ward (N.IRE) (PV-6-9-Fri 27th Sep)
The Concha Institute, Benedict Drew (PV-6-9-Fri 4th Oct).
DISPATCH | CARFAC
Dispatch, Volume 19 - Issue 2 - June 2013, Artist Centred Initiatives, CARFAC, Ontario, Canada.
Bill Burns,Hou Hanru Hear Us, September 10 - December 24, 2013. Reception: September 9. Davis Lisboa Museum. Barcelona, Spain
Hou Hanru Hear Us is a miniature scale paper model of the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane that I have jerry-rigged with a sign that says:
“Hou Hanru Hear Us”, on it. The Davis Museum specializes in miniature installations.
DAVIS MUSEUM OR THE FLUXUS 2.0 MUSEUM
‘[…] Here again, a new form of expression was involved. Instead of painting something new, I aimed to reproduce the paintings and the objects that
I liked and collect them in a space as small as possible. I did not know how to go about it. I first thought of a book, but I did not like the idea.
Then it occurred to me that it could be a box in which all my works would be collected and mounted, like in a small museum; a portable museum, so to
speak.’ With these words, Marcel Duchamp explained to J. J. Sweeney, in the course of an interview, the process that had led him to create the
Boîte-en-valise in 1935.
There is no doubt that Duchamp is an important referent for Davis Lisboa. But what can induce a contemporary artist to found a museum? Traditionally,
the museum is a place of conservation, of classification, a structure of memory and as such a bridge between past and future. Reflecting on and, above all,
questioning that function can be a stimulating working environment for a contemporary artist.
For an artist, founding a museum is a way of reflecting on, criticizing or opening up a discussion about the role of the museum while at the same time
drawing attention to aspects related to the production, distribution, and mediatization of art. That said, perhaps the questions should be: How is it
possible to create a museum devoted to a 21st-century artist? And what should such a museum contain?
The ephemeral museum, the permanent museum, the virtual-collective museum, the museum as fiction, as inspiration or as critique are some of the options
open to artists in setting out to define a museum project. Davis Lisboa is not the first nor will be the last artist to start a museum, and he is quite
ready to cite his predecessors (and to declare himself an advocate of appropriation) and the referents with which he identifies, such as Duchamp’s
Boîte-en-Valise (1935), Robert Filliou’s Galerie légitime (1962), Herbert Distel’s Museum of Drawers (1970) or François Curlet’s
Galerie Intuitive (2010).
The Davis Museum is in line with this genealogy of works: the ‘portability’ of Duchamp, Filliou’s championing of co-authoring together with the
legitimacy of the artists’ actions and a witty critique of the mechanisms of the art market, Distel’s passion for collecting, based on ‘collective donations’,
and the caper of donating the entire Museum of Drawers to the Kunsthaus in Zurich, a gesture that could also be carried out by the Davis Museum
in the near future. And, last but not least, the reprising of the Galerie Légitime by Curlet, in a move not far from that of the Davis Museum.
Founded in 2009, the Davis Museum is the world’s smallest museum of contemporary art. Alongside this description, which might earn it a place in
Guinness World Records, The Davis Museum is an initiative — or, as I think we can call it — a non-profit institution whose aims are to organize
and produce exhibitions, encourage research and promote contemporary art. The museum’s collection is made up of donations by artists. The Davis Museum
itself is in the form of a ballot box measuring 20 x 20 x 20 cm. The choice of object is not fortuitous: a ballot box is an industrially manufactured product,
minimalist in appearance, which makes the donating of an artwork a symbolic action that, in the words of its founder, amounts to ‘giving a vote of confidence
to the Davis Museum, since ‘if the museum is a ballot box, then the artwork is a vote’. The project consists of an architecture with a format
(the ballot box) that makes it easy to transport; it was first a showroom and is now a mini-installation in Barcelona and has a strong virtual presence by way
of Facebook, Twitter and a YouTube channel that generates a multiplier effect and effectively differentiates The Davis Museum from other museum projects
conceived by artists. Times have changed, and while back in 1968, Filliou toured the streets of Paris showing the works of Ben Patterson in his Galerie Légitime,
the Davis Museum now offers different itineraries by email and promises to be available in the near future on a variety of applications for iPhone, iPad, and Android.
One of the most important aspects of the Davis Museum is the networking that makes it a kind of Fluxus 2.0. In its day, Fluxus was a critical declaration
against the traditional object as a commodity and chose to dissolve art into everyday life, in opposition to the art institution. The Davis Museum is also
critical of the art establishment. The art system, the museums, and the institutions have grown, have expanded, and have created a structure so stable and so
rigid that it is now difficult for them to respond to the needs not only of art practices but of society at a time when the notion of the unique work is essentially
a concession to the market; meanwhile the artist’s role has diversified, and the modes of presentation are no longer shackled to the museum, and the forms of
distribution and communication need to be reinvented.
The Davis Museum presents itself as a proposal for networking, as a platform of communication that in its very functioning constitutes a critique of the way
the processes of the art institutions are managed. Resistance is the key. For Davis Lisboa, ‘the market is a tsunami and it will swallow anything it encounters on
its way, while the Davis Museum remains an island of resistance’.
Montse Badia
Barcelona, July 2012
DAVIS MUSEUM BY DEBORA ALANNA
When I first learned about the Davis Museum in 2010, I was impressed by Davis Lisboa's inclusivity, his determination to showcase what are glimpses into artists'
though a representation of their oeuvre/process. Allowing artists to present what are akin to jewels in a jewel case (the Davis Museum), Davis Lisboa promotes
and educates worldwide, allowing the development of audience and appreciation of how art can be integral to the global community.
For me, these are Davis Lisboa's substantial ideas for the continuing benefit of international artists, and the edification of the widest audience possible.
Small work? Works in the Davis Museum have magnitude, are dazzling as jewels, rare and intense. Artists donate the essence of themselves for this opportunity.
Enough space? Artists that donate work for the Davis Museum, are curated by Davis Lisboa surpasses the physical limits of space, are conscious works. This art
has integrity that expands space. The scope of the work dissolves containment.
Debora Alanna, artist, Canada. July 8th, 2013.
DAVIS MUSEUM
Why a museum with small objects?
The Davis Museum was created in 2009, during the subprime recession. The era of extravagance has come to an end and now we see a change in values: austerity and
simple and efficient solutions are the order of the day. The Davis Museum is a mini cultural entity as it's main idea is about being low-cost. This approach
criticizes institutional and capitalist systems and hopefully works towards a decline in these systems. The reason for the Davis Museum is clear:
"The market is a tsunami and it will swallow anything it encounters on its way, while the Davis Museum remains an island of resistance". A mini low-cost contemporary
art museum invites artists to create without spending exorbitant amounts of money. The small size of the artworks is a way of keeping costs low.
When will the size of a work be considered suitable for the museum?
The hardware of the Davis Museum can be found in a methacrylate ballot box that only measures 20 x 20 x 20 cm. One of the most important requirements of the work is
that it is smaller than the space available.
How has the museum evolved since opening on 1st January 2009?
The Davis Museum was "founded" via a page on Facebook and a channel on YouTube. A short time after, the contemporary art collection of the Davis Museum was
acknowledged by the local government of Catalonia. A web page of the museum was created and a logotype was designed which was patented in the OEPM, Oficina Española de
Patentes y Marcas (Spanish Office of Patents and Brands). As the collections and visits have increased, a mini showroom has been created so that visitors can enjoy the works of art.
In 2011, the Davis Museum was invited to take part in a collective exhibition called Museum Show, commissioned by Nav Haq, in Arnolfini (Bristol, United Kingdom),
one of the most important centers of contemporary art centers in Europe. In the Museum Show there is a selection of 40 museums of artists from all over the world, among
them are : Museum of Contemporary African Art (Meschac Gaba), the Boîte-en-valise (Marcel Duchamp), Museo Aero Solar, Museum of Conceptual Art (Tom Marioni), La Galerie
Légitime (Robert Filliou), Schubladenmuseum/Museum of Drawers (Herbert Distel), Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals (Bill Burns), Museum of Projective Personality Testing
(Sina Najafi & Christopher Turner), Museum of Revolution (Marko Lulic), Intuitive Galerie (François Curlet), Moon Museum (Forrest Myers), Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles
(Marcel Broodthaers), Museum for Myself (Peter Blake), World Agriculture Museum (Asunción Molinos), Stemhokkenmuseum/Voting Booth Museum (Guillaume Bijl), A History of Art in the Arab World:
Part 1_Chapter One_Section 139: The Atlas Group (Walid Raad), Museum of Ordure, Nasubi Gallery (Tsuyoshi Ozawa), Blackout Leica Museum (Sarkis), "I founded a fictitious museum in New York
in '68 and collected 1,000,000 minutes of attention to show", (James Lee Byars), Museum of Failure (Ellen Harvey), From the Freud Museum, (Susan Hiller), Palestinian Museum of Natural
History and Humankind (Khalil Rabah), Danger Museum (Øyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu), Museum of American Art, Museum of Non-Participation (Karen Mirza & Brad Butler), Museum of Television
Culture (Jaime Davidovich), Victoria and Alferd Museum (Åbäke), Hu Xiangqian's Museum (Hu Xiangqian), Museum of Forgotten History (Maarten Vanden Eynde), Museum of Incest (Simon Fujiwara),
Museo Salinas (Vicente Razo) and of course, Davis Museum, The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary in Barcelona (Davis Lisboa).
In 2012, a mini installation began to develop where 15 of the 213 artworks that make up the Davis Museum are on display (until the present date, 10th November 2012).
Throughout the entire process, TV and radio interviews as well as magazine and newspaper articles and publications on the Internet have been on the up.
How do you envisage the continuity of this project in the future?
In the very short term, I am preparing the recording of the exhibition/video /performance for the Danger Museum, a pair of artists featuring Miho Shimizu (Tokyo, Japan, 1976) and Øyvind
Renberg (Oslo, Norway, 1976), which will open on January 2013. Also, I would like to add the final touches to the mini installation of the Davis Museum in Barcelona. After, my idea is
to organize an opening event of this museum and invite those connected to the world of contemporary art and also a TV channel that could make a report on this event. This will be divided into
three parts. The first: an explanatory talk about the Davis Museum; the second: open debate with the guests; and the third: a cocktail. In the midterm, there are two interesting proposals
to exhibit at the Davis Museum, however, at the moment, I do not want to give away any more details about that. In the long term, I am thinking about amplifying the collection and improving
the level of the exhibitions/videos /performances. And in the very long term, closing the Davis Museum and donating it to a contemporary art museum so that the work continues to thrive thereafter.
What comments and opinions regarding the Davis Museum have surprised you most?
Some artists have surprised me when describing the museum, using terms such as: pataphysics, experimental, expansive, self-referring, utopic, personal, political, rational, speculative, community,
dematerialized, communicative, virtual, authoral, narcissistic, fictional, imaginary, parodic, alternative, anachronistic, domestic, jokey, feminine, anomalous, corporate…
From your experience with Facebook y Second Life, What do you think of artistic and cultural broadcasting via the Internet?
"Globalisation started on the day of the launch of the Apollo to the moon. On this day for the first time, two computers were connected: one in Washington and the other in Los Angeles. They were connected
to avoid that the lunar mission might have a center that could be attacked by the enemy. Suddenly, having a center stopped being an operative advantage and turned into a weak point" (Farinelli).
That is how the network and the digital era came into being. Therefore all the culture online is no more than a reaction to the decadence of the old institutional art system. As the great museum is failing us,
the vast majority of them should be replaced with a smaller newer unique structure, because I think this cultural model will enjoy greater independence, be more avant-guard and welcoming.
This is better than having to reform the old system of Art.
Troublant, Mara, the Davis Museum , Scoop.it Admirabilia, Literature, Art, Contemporary pictures, nº28, 13th November 2012, Madrid, Spain.
DANGER MUSEUM AT DAVIS MUSEUM PERMANENT COLLECTION
Danger Museum | Miho Shimizu | Øyvind Renberg | Tomorrow & Yesterday | Davis Museum | Barcelona from the Davis Museum on Vimeo.
MIHO SHIMIZU & ØYVIND RENBERG (DANGER MUSEUM) (Tokyo, Japan, 1976 | Oslo, Norway, 1976)
Tomorrow & Yesterday, 2012, cylinder seal, polyurethane resin, 7.4 x 2.9 in.
Date of donation: November 6, 2012
Production supported by Ryohei Takahashi (Gelchop)
DAVIS MUSEUM The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona
The smallest contemporary art museum in the world!
Miho Shimizu and Øyvind Renberg’s Danger Museum started as a mobile exhibition space, traveling and adapting its structure to present the works of friends and colleagues.
Over the years, the experience of travel, personal encounters, and adaptation has encouraged the production of reflexive, visual works and objects by engaging the method
of collage as a form of collecting, which recomposes experiences, mixing fiction and documentation.
Their interest in applied art and series production is reflected in projects that encompass multiples, furniture, posters, LPs and tableware. The change in meaning as the
objects circulate within and outside the art context is part of a dynamic that drives their practice.
Projects are conducted both under their names and as Danger Museum and through the Peanut Circuit label.
Tomorrow & Yesterday, produced for the Davis Museum, extends from a series of works inspired by the Japanese picture scroll. Shimizu and Renberg have already
explored the scroll’s narrative possibilities in watercolors serializing a Norwegian fjord trip. Tomorrow & Yesterday is a cylinder seal, an engraved sculpture cylinder tool,
originating in ancient Mesopotamia, that can roll a picture relief into wet clay. Their relief depicts an allegory on the relationship between man and woman: A man hunts a bird,
whose egg hatches into a new bird that hunts the man. By continuous rolling, the relief proposes an endless cycle.
CULTURAL INSTITUTIONS: PRESENCE ON THE INTERNET AND THE USE OF SOCIAL NETWORKS AND TOOLS 2.0
The majority of cultural institutions have launched head-on with the use of Internet and social networks aware of the fact that it was necessary, but more often than not without
giving any thought of the way in which they needed to be on them it goes without saying that this is an ever-changing world which makes it hard to know which direction to take.
Often the lack of a strategy means not using the Internet to its full advantage. Having arrived at this point (we are at that point but we must improve) and before applying or
developing any new stratedgy we should look into how we are there. This is the starting point of evaluation.
The analysis of the presence of cultural institutions across the net should not only refer to quantity but also quality. The first step in an analysis should be a recollection
of quantitative data and this is exactly what has been done. An initial evaluation of quality has been on trial but this has only been on a trial basis. It must be noted that
to carry out a recollection of data concerning quality, collaboration is needed and also in defining items that need to be assessed.
There have been 3 main areas analyzed (with their corresponding sub-areas). From these areas, 30 items have been extracted from answers to a yes/no question (Does the entity
have an account or is presence-based at...?). Each affirmative response was awarded a score of 1 and every negative one with 0. At any given moment the presence of a particular
entity on the internet has been valued more than one that simply manages. For example the entity is the Municipal Museum, the organization that manages it is the council.
Contact and localization online (in the cloud). This should be the first step in evaluating the presence of any organization on the Internet. An electronic mail and a webpage is needed.
Site or webpage. What minimum features should the web possess? An evaluation concerning design or technical aspects has not been tackled as this would form part of a quality analysis.
The webs have been found to raise the question as to who manages or who is in charge, if the web has been specifically created or not to publicize the organization and if a dominion exists.
And how many languages can the web be read in? Value has been given when more than one language is used because evidently some only use one language. Here value is given to the language used
where the organization is. This is an item that is perhaps quality-referring rather than quantity as could be an item that values syndication. In any case, here value is not placed on the
use of the language but if it exists or not. To go further into detail in terms of quality, the contents should also be analyzed, if they are their contents or from other sites referring
to spelling corrections.
Social networks, tools 2.0 and localization. The question is whether we should be on all existing social networks. The more networks we involve ourselves with, the more time and human
resources we will need to keep them up to date. A good analysis of quality will give us a closer look at the question of quantity. We must take into account the fact that cultural groups
should be generated by the content and these contents need to be distributed over the Net at the same time, the users should give feedback and this could influence the quality feedback.
Regarding quantity analysis, 16 items have been discovered that have later been used to establish the percentage of integration of the universe 2.0 on the web.
More than 500 museums, collectives, and cultural groups have been analyzed regarding their presence on the net. The list of groups understudy has come from search engines for museums and
collectives which can be found on the webpage of PatrimoniGencat. The patrimonial groups have been included in the list even though they are neither museums or collectives. They belong to
the network of Museums and Patrimonial groups of the Pyrennees and Aran. Such is the case for other groups that appear in the database for the New Plan for the Museums of Catalonia.
The study aims to give a first glance of the “digital behavior” of cultural groups and how this behavior is seen by the digital user. The collected data provide a first quantitive value
(with a possible maximum of 30 points) including various factors like the possibility of electronic contact with the organization and the assessment of its web page depending on authorship,
the available information, own dominion, languages, the possibility of syndication or the license of Creative Commons. To this quantitive value is also added the availability (or not) of 15
elements 2.0: blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Flikr, Picasa, Pinterest, Instagram, Vimeo, Youtube, Delicious, Issuu, Foursquare, Google Places, and mobile devices. A quality index has been
elaborated (with a possible maximum of 3 points) analyzing the behavior of the organizations on the 2 most used networks: Facebook and Twitter. This index reflects la regularity of the
publication in these two media and values the tendency if it is sporadic, monthly or weekly. Finally, the percentage of integration of the universe 2.0 on the web is also assessed.
This value is obtained comparing the tally of elements 2.0 (of the15 analyzed, in addition to the web syndication) where the entity is present, with the total of these elements accessible from the web.
Quantitative Ranking
The first place in the ranking goes to the Fundación Josep Pla de Palafrugell (Baix Empordà, Girona) which obtains 22 in the quality index, 3 in regularity in publication and 75% regarding integration
of the universe 2.0 on the web. Regarding the organizations in Lleida, the best value referring to the quantitative index is Panera de Lleida (Segrià) with a score of 18. Close behind is the Museum la
Moto Mario Soler de Bassella (Alt Urgelland the Art Museum of Jaume Morera de Lleida (Segrià), the latter scoring 89% of integration of the universe 2.0 on the web.
Percentage of Integration of the universe 2.0 on the web
The History Museum of Catalonia (MHC) is one of the 13 organizations which scores 100% in integration, in its 5 elements 2.0. We should also highlight 89% scored in integration by the Art Museum of
Jaume Morera, with a total de 9 elements 2.0 valued. The Josep Pla foundation scores 75% in integration of its 12 elements, The Natural Science Museum of Barcelona (MCNB) 73% of 11, and the Museum of
Rural Life of l'Espluga de Francolí (Conca de Barberà, Tarragona) scores 70% from 10.
Riudor i Garcia, Noemi, Presence of cultural organizations on the Internet. Use of the social networks and the Eines 2.0. Quantitative analysis., Esterri d'Àneu, Catalonia, Spain, 2012.
THE DAVIS MUSEUM PRODUCES VIDEO FEATURING THE WORKS OF UF SA+AH ASSISTANT PROFESSOR SEAN MILLER
"The Loop" UF CFA
in-the-loop
University of Florida College of Fine Arts News
The sculpture, photography, collaborations, and performative objects of UF SA+AH Assistant Professor Sean Miller from his on-going project ‘the John Erickson Museum of Art’ were recently the subject of
a video produced by the Davis Museum in Barcelona, Spain. Last year Miller presented these works with the Davis Museum at the Arnolfini Art Center in Bristol, U.K. In an exhibition entitled
“Museum Show” which featured an international array of artists that explore with the idea of the museum as subject matter for their art. Some of the work featured in the video is currently on display at
the University Gallery as part of this year's faculty exhibition. Watch the video now on YouTube.
JEMA PRESENTS A TRAVELING EXHIBITION AT THE DAVIS MUSEUM IN BARCELONA, SPAIN FEATURING THE WORKS OF CONNIE HWANG AND BENJAMIN PATTERSON
View a New Video by Davis Lisboa exhibiting works from Hwang, Patterson, JEMA, and the Art Museum Dust Collection
MY ART IS TO LEAVE A SPACE FOR THE ARTISTS TO OCCUPY AND SHINE BY THEMSELVES
Who defines his art in this way is Davis Lisboa, creator and director of the Davis Museum - The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art . Since 2009, the smallest museum in the world has
organized contemporary art exhibitions in a plexiglass urn measuring just 20 x 20 x 20 cm. Thought as a low-cost institution, with low production and transfer costs, it receives artists from
countries as far away as Brazil, Iran, the United States and France.
What are the elements that constitute the Davis Museum project?
There is a physical aspect of the project and a virtual one. In the first, I include the exhibition of the permanent collection in museums, biennials, galleries or in the showroom of the
Davis Museum in Barcelona. In this last space is where the Davis Tower Museum is parked, an urn located on a white pedestal where a small-format work of art by a different artist
is exhibited every four months. All the artworks created and related to the same project must also be added, together with the promotional materials of the exhibitions.
How is the virtual aspect of the museum developed?
The group of virtual elements includes the 3D installations that were made in the Karura Art Center Museum, located in Second Life, the interviews, photos, critical texts and events published on
Facebook and Blogger, along with the submission of exhibition posters to the Davis Museum mailing list. A video of shared creation is published on YouTube for each exhibition, which is
born from the participation of the artist, with his work, and myself, who interpret it in a video art. This set of short films will form a historical archive that can be consulted and that will
relate the creations of certain artists at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
How was the genesis of the Davis Museum project?
After the twelve years that I was studying Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, I decided to restore the reading of those books that I had not been able to read during my degree. One of them
has been Art since 1900, modernism, antimodernism, postmodernism, by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh. Within the whole book, I was struck by how
Marcel Duchamp's Boîte-en-valise work opened an unexplored path, and how, 40 years later, Robert Filliou has managed to advance this type of art. It was precisely reading about his
Galerie légitime that I had a “revelation”. In a few seconds, the whole series of ideas of how I should create, carry out and give meaning to the Davis Museum came to my mind
like a cascadel. If the Boîte-en-valise exhibited the miniature works of Duchamp and the Galerie légitime contacted and exhibited works of Filliou's artist friends in an analog way,
Davis Museum would contact and exhibit the works of artists in an analogical and above all virtual way. It would be a kind of social network for artists, which would highlight its contemporary character.
Among the artists who work in this perspective, before the reference to Robert Filliou appears Marcel Broodthaers, why not in your case?
You're right, I should include Marcel Broodthaers's Musée d´Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles in the “Precedents” section of the Davis Museum website. And I will, but what really struck
me the most was Filliou's work for its combination of cheekiness and lightness, its apparent simplicity and innocence and its imagination, something that is not present in the Broodthaers' work.
What was the meaning of choosing an urn as "architecture"?
It is evident that the "architecture" of the Davis Museum is ready-made, a slightly intervened industrial object that flirts with minimalism and (dangerously) with advertising. But above all,
what I would like to highlight is a political reading regarding the art system, which does nothing more than prevent the direct participation of artists in the institutions. My intention was to propose
a new way of organizing a contemporary art museum, from the citizen initiative, through digital communication platforms and in this way, collectively create public value, without forgetting
to review the democracy. And if the museum is an urn, when an artist decides to donate a work, he is in some way, giving a vote of confidence to the Davis Museum project, which thus fulfills
its social function of disseminating the art of artists´participants.
Could you explain to us the relationship of the Davis Museum with Brazilian anthropophagy?
At the beginning, the museum was titled The Antropofagic Davis Lisboa Museum of Contemporary Art and this was a way of updating, of following a chain within the modern Brazilian artistic tradition.
A museum that "symbolically engulfs the work and metabolizes it to transform it into a new culture." This idea has been misinterpreted by most artists. So, during the development of the project and its
presentation to the Generalitat de Catalunya (Spanish autonomous government), I hesitated, I removed the adjective "Antropofagic" from the title and thus registered the Davis Museum contemporary
art collection. Although the adjective is absent in the title, the idea of "swallowing the culture of others" persists in it indirectly.
And within the context of Brazilian art, what have been your references?
Certainly, the artist Carlos Fajardo has been key in my training, since I frequented his workshops for four years and I learned with him that art has to be an intellectual challenge.
What criteria do you use to choose the works?
The quality of the work and the curriculum are very important. Therefore, if the same piece is capable of creating a dialogue with the other works in the collection, they must address the contemporary in
form and content. That "style" of having been produced at the end of the last century and at the beginning of the 21st.
How do you decide how you display the Davis Museum ?
Like the Boîte-en-valise and the Galerie légitime , the Davis Museum is a miniature and portable museum, however, and Unlike the former, the Davis Museum is a “liquid” museum
that can take infinite forms, such as a cardboard toy (DTAM I, Davis Toy Art Museum I), a plastic toy (DTAM II, Davis Toy Art Museum II), a lead sculpture (DLM, Davis Lead Museum), a pedestal (DTWM, Davis Tower
Museum) or a rock (DRM, Davis Rock Museum). So, the challenge for me is constantly adapting the museum to changing environments.
Díez Fischer, Agustín R., My art is to leave a space for artists to occupy it and shine for themselves, ArteCreha, Collective for the renovation of art history studies, Spain, February 9, 2012.
DAVIS MUSEUM
Written by Jesús Martínez Verón (Creha)
The Davis Museum is the smallest museum in the world recognized as such. Physically, the museum is a 20 x 20 x 20 cm methacrylate box that is located on the first floor of number 7 Puigmartí Street in Barcelona.
Originally, the Davis Museum (with precedents in Marcel Duchamp and Robert Filliou) is a project of the Brazilian artist Davis Lisboa (São Paulo, Brazil, 1965) who describes the idea as a "mini-museum of
contemporary art". And like any museum worth its salt, the Davis has exhibitions, collections of prestigious authors and numerous videos in which the physical "museum" itself is the subject of different types of interventions.
To get to know the Davis Museum better, we recommend that you visit its OFFICIAL WEBSITE or access its FACEBOOK page, which currently has more than 1,200 followers (by the way, it includes videos such as the one of
the inauguration of the Museum).
Martínez Verón, Jesús, ArteCreha, Collective for the renovation of art history studies, Spain, November 2, 2010.
MEET THE WORLD'S SMALLEST MUSEUM
The creator of the project is the Spanish-Brazilian Davis Lisboa
BY CLAUDIA BORGES ON 12/04/2011
Imagine a museum about 20 cubic centimeters in size. Because it exists and is installed in the apartment of its creator, artist and designer Davis Lisboa. Born in São Paulo, Lisboa founded the smallest contemporary art museum
in the world, located in Barcelona, Spain in 2009. The museum has its permanent collection of art and its format, made of methacrylate and vinyl, was inspired by a voting box: “Because every piece of art that an artist donates
is like a vote”, says Lisboa.
The Davis Museum is not for profit. What Davis Lisboa seeks is to value art, without sales, in order to promote research, study and dissemination of contemporary art. And, for artists who want to exhibit in their museum, the main
requirement is that all works fit in the tiny space of 20 x 20 x 20 cm. The museum has traveled to exhibit its works in other cultural institutions throughout Spain and around the world.
To learn more visit the museum's website.
Service:
The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona
C/ Puigmartí, 7, 1º, 2ª, 08012-Barcelona - Spain
Borges, Claudia, Conheça o menor museu do mundo, TodaEla, Viajem, Zebra Network LTDA, Brasil, April 12, 2011.
TÒNIA COLL EXHIBITS HER ART IN THE SMALLEST MUSEUM IN THE WORLD
Menorca.info
His piece "Llit" is part of an online exhibition that opened at the beginning of the month in a space where the works cannot exceed 15 centimeters.
Raquel Marqués, MAÓ 11/01/2012
Tònia Coll (Ferreries, 1965) exhibits her art in the tiniest space on the planet. Recognized by the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Davis Museum is the smallest museum in the world, created by Davis Lisboa,
a Brazilian-born advertising artist.
The Menorcan author makes her entry into the project, based in Barcelona, through her piece "Llit", a delicate composition of a bed like a plastic toy wrapped in a wide blanket of hair.
The online exhibition was inaugurated at the beginning of the month and visitors can access it through the Internet. In its 2012 programming schedule, the museum (www.davismuseum.com) incorporates a video -of little
more than two minutes long - to which he adds a summary of Coll's creative career and his project "La Flor i la Presó". The artist, PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona, explains how one of the requirements
to follow is that the works do not exceed 15 centimeters.
Under the influence of Dadaism and Marcel Duchamp and the idea of his briefcase museum where he kept the miniatures of his works, Davis Lisboa, linked to "bridge" platforms such as YouTube or Facebook, sets up traveling
exhibitions thanks to an iPhone. It is a non-profit artistic project that encourages research around contemporary art. An end that passes through the diffusion of emerging creators.
Marqués, Raquel, Tònia Coll expone su arte en el museo más pequeño del mundo, Menorca.info, Editorial Menorca S.A., Cap de Cavallería, 5. 07714 Maó (Menorca), Spain, January 11, 2012.
Including:
Museum of Contemporary African Art (Meschac Gaba), Boîte-en-valise (Marcel Duchamp), Museo Aero Solar, Museum of Conceptual Art (Tom Marioni), La Galerie Légitime (Robert Filliou),
Schubladenmuseum/Museum of Drawers (Herbert Distel), Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals (Bill Burns), Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum (Davis Lisboa), Museum of Projective Personality Testing
(Sina Najafi & Jonathan Turner), Museum of Revolution (Marko Lulic), Intuitive Galerie (François Curlet), Moon Museum (Forrest Myers), Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles
(Marcel Broodthaers), Museum for Myself (Peter Blake), World Agriculture Museum (Asunción Molinos), Stemhokkenmuseum/Voting Booth Museum (Guillaume Bijl), Nasubi Gallery (Tsuyoshi Ozawa),
A History of Art in the Arab World: Part 1_Chapter One. Section 139: The Atlas Group (1989–2004) (Walid Raad), Blackout Leica Museum (Sarkis), Museum of Ordure, From the Freud Museum
(Susan Hiller), Museum of Failure (Ellen Harvey), "I founded a fictitious museum in New York in '68 and collected 1,000,000 minutes of attention to show" (James Lee Byars)…
Museum Show: Part 2
9 December 2011–5 February 2012
Including:
Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (Khalil Rabah), Danger Museum (Øyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu), Museum of American Art, Museum of Non-Participation (Karen Mirza & Brad Butler),
Museum of Television Culture (Jaime Davidovich), Victoria and Alferd Museum (Åbäke), Hu Xiangqian's Museum (Hu Xiangqian), Museum of Forgotten History (Maarten Vanden Eynde), Museum of Incest (Simon Fujiwara).
One of the most curious tendencies in modern and contemporary art has been that of museums created by artists. Museum Show is a historical survey exhibition—or a 'museum of museums' perhaps—displaying a
comprehensive selection of these highly idiosyncratic, semi-fictional institutions. Presented at Arnolfini in two chapters, it will be the first exhibition to chart this particular tendency in contemporary art.
Museum Show 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 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.
The exhibition includes museums that employ a classic 'museological' approach, including Marcel Broodthaers' seminal Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles and the absurdity of Bill Burns' Museum of
Safety Gear for Small Animals, through to broader, more conceptual understandings of a museum infrastructure, such as Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art—a functioning bar and an early example of 'convivial'
artwork in the US, to the abjection of Museum of Ordure, or the utopia of Museo Aero Solar—a floating museum made of thousands of recycled carrier bags.
The opening of Museum Show Part 1 also marks the landmark occasion of Arnolfini's 50th anniversary. For this year-long anniversary program, Arnolfini has worked with the research theme of The Apparatus,
reflecting on the conditions of the art system today. The Apparatus is about the 'makings of' artists, of artworks, of institutions, and a cultural infrastructure.
Selected 50th Anniversary Events
Cerith Wyn Evans: Paysage Fautif (Wayward Landscape)
Friday 23 September, 9.30 pm
Cerith Wyn Evans fireworks pieces are wooden structures that spell out texts that burn. This text firework piece uses letters written by Marcel Duchamp to his lover.
Hassan Khan
Fri 23 September, 10pm
Party music comes from Cairo-based artist, musician, and writer Hassan Khan, performing The Big One (medley). DJ set by Big City Sound Girl.
The Museum of Ordure
Stuart Brisley and Geoff Cox
Saturday 24 September, 12pm–1pm
Performance lecture about the Museum of Ordure.
Neil Cummings Book Launch and Exhibition Tour of his residency project Self Portrait: Arnolfini
Sunday 25 September, 12 pm–1 pm
Seth Siegelaub in conversation with Teresa Gleadowe
Wednesday 5 October, 6 pm
MY MUSEUM, MY RULES
INTERNATIONAL
20 cubic centimeters is enough space to host temporary exhibitions. This has been demonstrated by the Spanish-Brazilian artist Davis Lisboa (São Paulo, 1965), the creator and owner of a cubicle to display
tiny pieces of contemporary art, including video art. Due to its dimensions, it is a museum that fits in a suitcase and that
has now traveled to be exhibited alongside other peculiar "art museums", in an exhibition in Bristol on fictional art centers devised by artists.
The 'Museum Show' exhibition -organized by the Arnolfini art center in Bristol, in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Spain in
the United Kingdom- will bring together imaginary institutions of 40 artists from around the world starting this Saturday.
Along with Davis Lisboa, owner of the smallest contemporary art museum in the world, the Spanish Asunción Molinos Gordo (Guzmán, Burgos, 1979) also participates, with its World Agriculture Museum.
It is not the first time that this artist uses agricultural concepts in her works.
In the exhibition, you can see both museums that use a classic "museological" approach and others that close to the absurd. Among the most conceptual interpretations of the infrastructure of a museum, the Cabinet
of Acción Cultural Española highlights the Museum of Conceptual Art by Tom Marioni - a bar that functions as such and that tries to emphasize that drinking with friends can also be everything an art or the
Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals, by Bill Burns, with useless objects for the protection of animals.
One of the most curious trends in modern and contemporary art has been that of the artist's museum: from the Second World War to the present day some creators have invented their own semi-fictional institutions.
Museum Show brings together a selection of these imaginary institutions devised by about 40 artists from around the world, from different periods and backgrounds, which can be seen in two phases in
the city of Bristol.
The Spanish artist Asunción Molinos (Guzmán, Burgos, 1979) and the Spanish-Brazilian creator Davis Lisboa (Sao Paulo, 1965) are present, thanks to the collaboration of AC / E, in the first phase of this exhibition,
with the World Agricultural Museum and Davis Lisboa mini-museum, respectively. The exhibition examines the different interpretations that artists have of what a museum should be while tracing the
methodologies and reasons used by creators to create their own institutions. Institutions that historically ranged from criticism directed at artistic institutions to more contemporary examples that focus their
attention on broader social and political spheres of cultural hegemony.
In the exhibition you can see both museums that use a classic "museological" approach such as the Musée d'Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles, by Marcel Broodthaers, and the absurd Museum of Safety Gear
for Small Animals, by Bill Burns, as broader and more conceptual interpretations of the infrastructure of a museum, such as Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art - a bar that functions as such and
offers in An early example of a “friendly environment” artwork in the US - the abject Trash Museum or the utopia of the Aerosol Museum - a floating institution made out of thousands of recycled carrier bags-.
Although the Arnolfini art center will be the main venue for this exhibition, some of the works can be seen in other places in the city such as the M Shed, located on the other side of the port, which will host the
Museum of the Revolution, of Marko Lulic or the old Bridewell police station that will house the World Agricultural Museum, of Asunción Molinos. The massive Aerosol Museum event can be
seen on Sunday 9th October in the Hengrove district in the south of Bristol.
Organized
Arnolfini
Collaborate
Acción Cultural Española (AC/E)
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Spain
Embassy of Spain in the United Kingdom
Curator
Nav Haq
Location, works and dates:
Arnolfini (Bristol, UK)
From September 24, 2011 to November 19, 2011
Museum of Contemporary African Art (Meschac Gaba), Boîte-en-valise (Marcel Duchamp), Museo Aero Solar, Museum of Conceptual Art (Tom Marioni), La Galerie Légitime (Robert Filliou), Schubladenmuseum/Museum of Drawers
(Herbert Distel), Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals (Bill Burns), Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum (Davis Lisboa), Museum of Projective Personality Testing (Sina Najafi & Christopher Turner), Museum of Revolution (Marko Lulic),
Intuitive Galerie (François Curlet), Moon Museum (Forrest Myers), Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (Marcel Broodthaers), Museum for Myself (Peter Blake), World Agriculture Museum (Asunción Molinos),
Stemhokkenmuseum/Voting Booth Museum (Guillaume Bijl), Nasubi Gallery (Tsuyoshi Ozawa), A History of Art in the Arab World: Part 1_Chapter One. Section 139: The Atlas Group (1989 -2004) (Walid Raad), Blackout Leica Museum
(Sarkis), Museum of Ordure, From the Freud Museum (Susan Hiller), "I founded a fictitious museum in New York in '68 and collected 1,000,000 minutes of attention to show" (James Lee Byars), Museum of Failure (Ellen Harvey)…
From December 9, 2011 to February 5, 2012
Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (Khalil Rabah), Danger Museum (Øyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu), Museum of American Art, Museum of Non-Participation (Karen Mirza & Brad Butler), Museum of Television Culture
(Jaime Davidovich), Victoria and Alferd Museum (Åbäke), Hu Xiangqian’s Museum (Hu Xiangqian), Museum of Forgotten History (Maarten Vanden Eynde), Museum of Incest (Simon Fujiwara)…
ASUNCIÓN MOLINOS AND DAVIS LISBOA EXHIBIT THEIR MUSEUMS IN BRISTOL
One of the most curious trends in modern and contemporary art has been that of the artist's museum. From the Second World War to the present day, some creators have invented their own semi-fictional institutions. Museum Show
–organized by the Arnolfini art center in Bristol with the collaboration of Acción Cultural Española (AC / E), the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and our Embassy in the United Kingdom– brings together
a selection of these imaginary institutions devised by about 40 artists from around the world, from different eras and trajectories, which can be seen in two phases in the city of Bristol between tomorrow, Saturday,
September 24, 2011, and February 5, 2012.
The Spanish artist Asunción Molinos (Guzmán, Burgos, 1979) and the Spanish-Brazilian creator Davis Lisboa (São Paulo, 1965) are present, thanks to the collaboration of AC / E, in the first phase of this exhibition, with the
Agricultural Museum Mundial (in the picture) and Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum, respectively.
The exhibition examines the different interpretations that artists have of what a museum should be while tracing the methodologies and reasons used by creators to create their own institutions. Institutions that have historically
ranged from criticism directed at artistic institutions to more contemporary examples that focus their attention on broader social and political spheres of cultural hegemony.
From the bar to the trash
In the exhibition you can see both museums that use a classic "museological" approach such as the Musée d'Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles, by Marcel Broodthaers, and the absurd Museum of Safety Gear
for Small Animals, by Bill Burns, as broader and more conceptual interpretations of the infrastructure of a museum, such as Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art - a bar that functions as such and
offers in An early example of a “friendly environment” artwork in the US - the abject Trash Museum or the utopia of the Aerosol Museum - a floating institution made out of thousands of recycled carrier bags-.
Although the Arnolfini art center will be the main venue for this exhibition, some of the works can be seen in other places in the city such as the M Shed, located on the other side of the port, which will host the
Museum of the Revolution, of Marko Lulic or the old Bridewell police station that will house the World Agricultural Museum, of Asunción Molinos. The massive Aerosol Museum event can be
seen on Sunday 9th October in the Hengrove district in the south of Bristol.
Bristol (UK). Museum Show. Arnolfini.
Curator: Nav Haq
From September 24, 2011 to November 19, 2011.
Museum of Contemporary African Art (Meschac Gaba), Boîte-en-valise (Marcel Duchamp), Museo Aero Solar, Museum of Conceptual Art (Tom Marioni), La Galerie Légitime (Robert Filliou), Schubladenmuseum/Museum of Drawers
(Herbert Distel), Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals (Bill Burns), Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum (Davis Lisboa), Museum of Projective Personality Testing (Sina Najafi & Christopher Turner), Museum of Revolution (Marko Lulic),
Intuitive Galerie (François Curlet), Moon Museum (Forrest Myers), Musée d'Art Moderne, Département des Aigles (Marcel Broodthaers), Museum for Myself (Peter Blake), World Agriculture Museum (Asunción Molinos),
Stemhokkenmuseum/Voting Booth Museum (Guillaume Bijl), Nasubi Gallery (Tsuyoshi Ozawa), A History of Art in the Arab World: Part 1_Chapter One. Section 139: The Atlas Group (1989 -2004) (Walid Raad), Blackout Leica Museum
(Sarkis), Museum of Ordure, From the Freud Museum (Susan Hiller), "I founded a fictitious museum in New York in '68 and collected 1,000,000 minutes of attention to show" (James Lee Byars), Museum of Failure (Ellen Harvey)…
From December 9, 2011 to February 5, 2012
Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (Khalil Rabah), Danger Museum (Øyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu), Museum of American Art, Museum of Non-Participation (Karen Mirza & Brad Butler), Museum of Television Culture
(Jaime Davidovich), Victoria and Alferd Museum (Åbäke), Hu Xiangqian’s Museum (Hu Xiangqian), Museum of Forgotten History (Maarten Vanden Eynde), Museum of Incest (Simon Fujiwara)…
MUSEUM SHOW PART 1
THE SMALLEST MUSEUM
Centelles. In 2009 the artist Marina Berdalet told us that she had given a small drawing to a museum of Davis Lisboa. It was the 17th entry in the permanent collection of this museum with a physical address in a flat in Barcelona,
a virtual visit to YouTube and a small cubic stand that travels the world exhibiting the works in the collection. It is the smallest art museum in the world. The Davis Lisboa Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona currently has
172 pieces. The last addition was made last September 5, with an acrylic by Dani Montlleó, from Mataró. It represents national and international artists, names like Jeff Roland, Cecil Touchon or the Thai Sarawut Chutiwongpeti.
The works are usually small format or electronic format as is the case of the video that was the founding piece of the collection, the work of María Cañas, in February 2009.
The Davis Museum presents exhibitions at several locations and has even exhibited in a Second Life Museum. On September 24, a selection from the Davis Lisboa collection will take part in a “museum exhibition” at the Arnolfini
Museum in Bristol, England. This is an exhibition organized to explain the phenomenon of museums created by artists. Because there are many institutions of this type that share a private initiative, an artistic and economically
modest origin, but eager to spread the art of a group or an area. This is the case of the Museum of Contemporary African Art or the Musée d’Art Modern, Department of Eagles created by Marcel Broodthaers. These two will also
take part in the Bristol Museum Show. This exhibition is divided into two parts separated by dates. The image illustrating the text is from the Davis Museum's exhibition at the Karura Art Center in Second Life.
It was donated by the artist.
The virtual address of the museum is http://www.davismuseum.com/. Other links: http://www.davislisboa.com/ and
https://www.youtube.com/user/davismuseumbarcelona
AC / E takes Davis Lisboa and Asunción Molinos to the Bristol Museum Show, an exhibition that gathers and analyzes fictional museums designed by artists
23 September, 2011
One of the most curious trends in modern and contemporary art has been that of the artist's museum. From the Second World War to the present day, some creators have invented their own semi-fictional institutions. Museum Show
–organized by the Arnolfini art center in Bristol with the collaboration of Acción Cultural Española (AC / E), the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and our Embassy in the United Kingdom– brings together
a selection of these imaginary institutions devised by about 40 artists from around the world, from different eras and trajectories, which can be seen in two phases in the city of Bristol between tomorrow, Saturday,
September 24, 2011, and February 5, 2012.
The Spanish artist Asunción Molinos (Guzmán, Burgos, 1979) and the Spanish-Brazilian creator Davis Lisboa (São Paulo, 1965) are present, thanks to the collaboration of AC / E, in the first phase of this exhibition, with the
Agricultural Museum Mundial and Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum, respectively. The exhibition examines the different interpretations that artists have of what a museum should be while tracing the methodologies and reasons used by
creators to create their own institutions. Institutions that have historically ranged from criticism directed at artistic institutions to more contemporary examples that focus their attention on broader social and political
spheres of cultural hegemony.
In the exhibition you can see both museums that use a classic "museological" approach such as the Musée d'Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles, by Marcel Broodthaers, and the absurd Museum of Safety Gear
for Small Animals, by Bill Burns, as broader and more conceptual interpretations of the infrastructure of a museum, such as Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art - a bar that functions as such and
offers in An early example of a “friendly environment” artwork in the US - the abject Trash Museum or the utopia of the Aerosol Museum - a floating institution made out of thousands of recycled carrier bags-.
Although the Arnolfini art center will be the main venue for this exhibition, some of the works can be seen in other places in the city such as the M Shed, located on the other side of the port, which will host the
Museum of the Revolution, of Marko Lulic or the old Bridewell police station that will house the World Agricultural Museum, of Asunción Molinos. The massive Aerosol Museum event can be
seen on Sunday 9th October in the Hengrove district in the south of Bristol.
Among the fictional museums of the first phase (from September 24 to November 19, 2011), you can see the Museum of Contemporary African Art (Meschac Gaba), Boîte-en-valise (Marcel Duchamp), Museo Aero Solar,
Museum of Conceptual Art (Tom Marioni), La Galerie Légitime (Robert Filliou), Schubladenmuseum/Museum of Drawers (Herbert Distel), Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals (Bill Burns), Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum
(Davis Lisboa), Museum of Projective Personality Testing (Sina Najafi & Christopher Turner), Museum of Revolution (Marko Lulic), Intuitive Galerie (François Curlet), Moon Museum (Forrest Myers), Musée d'Art Moderne,
Département des Aigles (Marcel Broodthaers), Museum for Myself (Peter Blake), World Agriculture Museum (Asunción Molinos), Stemhokkenmuseum/Voting Booth Museum (Guillaume Bijl), Nasubi Gallery (Tsuyoshi Ozawa),
A History of Art in the Arab World: Part 1_Chapter One. Section 139: The Atlas Group (1989 -2004) (Walid Raad), Blackout Leica Museum (Sarkis), Museum of Ordure, From the Freud Museum (Susan Hiller), "I founded a
fictitious museum in New York in '68 and collected 1,000,000 minutes of attention to show" (James Lee Byars), Museum of Failure (Ellen Harvey)…
In the second phase (from December 9, 2011 to February 5, 2012) you will see: Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (Khalil Rabah), Danger Museum (Øyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu), Museum of American Art,
Museum of Non-Participation (Karen Mirza & Brad Butler), Museum of Television Culture (Jaime Davidovich), Victoria and Alferd Museum (Åbäke), Hu Xiangqian’s Museum (Hu Xiangqian), Museum of Forgotten History
(Maarten Vanden Eynde), y Museum of Incest (Simon Fujiwara).
Source: Acción Cultural Española, AC/E
Exhibition title: "Museum Show"
Location: Arnolfini Cultural Center, M Shed, Bridewell Police Station and Hengrove District
City: Bristol
Country: UK
Dates: From September 24, 2011 to February 5, 2012 (1st phase: from September 24 to November 19, 2011; 2nd phase: from December 9 to February 5, 2012)
Visual Arts
AC/E, Acción Cultural Española, Asunción Molinos, Bristol, Arnolfini Cultural Center, Davis Lisboa, Embajada de España en el Reino Unido, Ministerio de
Asuntos Exteriores y de Cooperación de España, UK
20 cubic centimeters is enough space to host temporary exhibitions. This has been demonstrated by the Spanish-Brazilian artist Davis Lisboa (São Paulo, 1965), the creator and owner of a cubicle to display
tiny pieces of contemporary art, including video art. Due to its dimensions, it is a museum that fits in a suitcase and that
has now traveled to be exhibited alongside other peculiar "art museums", in an exhibition in Bristol on fictional art centers devised by artists.
The 'Museum Show' exhibition -organized by the Arnolfini art center in Bristol, in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Embassy of Spain in
the United Kingdom- will bring together imaginary institutions of 40 artists from around the world starting this Saturday.
Along with Davis Lisboa, owner of the smallest contemporary art museum in the world, the Spanish Asunción Molinos Gordo (Guzmán, Burgos, 1979) also participates, with its World Agriculture Museum.
It is not the first time that this artist uses agricultural concepts in her works.
In the exhibition, you can see both museums that use a classic "museological" approach and others that close to the absurd. Among the most conceptual interpretations of the infrastructure of a museum, the Cabinet
of Acción Cultural Española highlights the Museum of Conceptual Art by Tom Marioni - a bar that functions as such and that tries to emphasize that drinking with friends can also be everything an art or the
Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals, by Bill Burns, with useless objects for the protection of animals.
MUSEUM SHOW
Part 1 & 2
Exhibitions
Sat 24 Sep - Sun 5 Feb
Free
Museum Show Part 1
24 Sep - 19 Nov 2011
Including:
Museum of Contemporary African Art (Meschac Gaba), Boîte-en-valise (Marcel Duchamp), Museo Aero Solar, Museum of Conceptual Art (Tom Marioni), La Galerie Légitime (Robert Filliou),
Schubladenmuseum/Museum of Drawers (Herbert Distel),Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals (Bill Burns), Davis Lisboa Mini- Museum (Davis Lisboa), Museum of Projective Personality Testing
(Sina Najafi & Christopher Turner), Museum of Revolution (Marko Lulic), Intuitive Galerie (François Curlet), Moon Museum (Forrest Myers), Musée d'Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles
(Marcel Broodthaers), Museum for Myself (Peter Blake), World Agriculture Museum (Asunción Molinos), Stemhokkenmuseum/Voting Booth Museum (Guillaume Bijl), A History of Art in the Arab World:
Part 1_Chapter One. Section 139: The Atlas Group (1989 -2004) (Walid Raad), Museum of Ordure (Stuart Brisley)...
Museum Show Part 2
9 Dec - 5 Feb 2012
Including:
Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind (Khalil Rabah), Danger Museum (Øyvind Renberg & Miho Shimizu), Museum of American Art, Museo Salinas (Vicente Razo), Museum of Non-Participation
(Karen Mirza & Brad Butler), Fernsehgalerie/TV Gallery (Gerry Schum), Museum of Television Culture (Jaime Davidovich), Museum of Modern Art Syros (Martin Kippenberger), Museum of Failure
(Ellen Harvey), Victoria and Alferd Museum (Åbäke), Hu Xiangquian's Museum (Hu Xiangquian), Museum of Forgotten History (Maarten Vanden Eynde), Museum of Unfinished Art (Mark von Schlegell),
Museum of Incest (Simon Fujiwara)...
One of the most curious tendencies in modern and contemporary art has been that of museums created by artists. Museum Show will be a large-scale exhibition - a museum of museums - displaying this comprehensive
selection of highly idiosyncratic, semi-fictional institutions. Presented at Arnolfini in two chapters, beginning with Part 1 from 24 September - 19 November 2011, it will be the first exhibition to chart this particular
tendency in contemporary art.
Artists have continued consistently to invent their institutions. The reasons for practitioners deciding to work in this way have varied greatly between artists - from critique directed specifically towards institutions
of art to more contemporary examples that focus their attention towards wider social and political realms of cultural hegemony.
Across its two chapters, Museum Show will present museums by approximately 40 artists from across the spectrum of career status, canonical to emerging, and from around the globe. The exhibition presents ‘museums'
that employ a classic ‘museological' approach, including Marcel Broodthaers' seminal Musée d'Art Moderne, Départment des Aigles, Tsuyoshi Ozawa's Museum of Soy Sauce Art, or the absurdity of Bill Burns'
Museum of Safety Gear for Small Animals, through to broader, more conceptual understandings of a museum infrastructure, such as Tom Marioni's Museum of Conceptual Art - a functioning bar and an early example
of ‘convivial' artwork in the US, to the abjection of Stuart Brisley's Museum of Ordure, or the utopia of Museo Aero Solar - a floating museum made of thousands of recycled carrier bags.
The opening of Museum Show Part 1 will also mark the landmark occasion of Arnolfini's 50th anniversary and the culmination of a year of celebration.
Museum Show Part 1 is supported by:
Mondriaan Foundation
Canada House Arts Trust
Acción Cultural Española
The Henry Moore Foundation
The Japan Foundation
Austrian Cultural Forum
The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia
Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands
The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation
Perspective
The Apparatus is a year-long project running throughout 2011, to mark Arnolfini's 50th anniversary. This series of exhibitions and events will focus on the conditions of the art world today, particularly its systems of
belief and valuation, its role within society, and its relationship to the wider political economy. The Apparatus is about the ‘makings of' artists, of artworks, of institutions, and a cultural infrastructure.
50th Anniversary Weekend
Arnolfini is 50! We are celebrating 50 years of presenting the very best in contemporary art in all its forms; visual, performance, music, cinema, sound and literature during the weekend of 23 - 25 September.
Artistic Director and Chief Executive Tom Trevor commented ‘When Arnolfini opened, the founding Director Jeremy Rees wanted to put a plaque above the door saying ‘Enjoy Yourself!'. Although this inscription never
appeared above the door, the spirit remains, for our 50th-anniversary celebrations - we hope you 'enjoy yourself'.
"MY ART IS TO LEAVE A SPACE TO BE OCCUPIED BY ARTISTS WHERE THEY CAN SHINE FOR THEMSELVES"
Davis Lisboa defines his art in the way. He is the creator and director of the Davis Museum – The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona. Since 2009, the ‘smallest museum in the world’ has organised
exhibitions of contemporary art in a Plexi-glass ballot box of 7.8 x 7.8 x 7.8 inches. Designed as a low-cost institution, with low-cost production and shipping of works, it exhibits artists from as far afield as Brazil, Iran,
the US, and France.
What are the components of the Davis Museum projects?
The project has a physical aspect and a virtual one. The first includes the display of the permanent collection in museums, biennials, galleries or at the Davis Museum’s showroom in Barcelona. Here the Davis Tower Museum,
a ballot box on a white pedestal is displayed. Every four months a miniature work by different artists is exhibited.
How is the virtual side of the museum developed?
In the virtual sphere, we include the installations in 3D at the Karura Art Centre Museum located in Second Life. Interviews, photos, events and the online flyers are sent to the mailing list of the Davis Museum. A video is
published on YouTube on the occasion of each exhibition; this video works as a shared creation between the exhibiting artists and myself creating the video. This information forms an open archive of works of art by a selection of
artists of the late 20th and early 21st Century.
Describe the genesis of the Davis Museum?
After twelve years of studying Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona, I decided to take some time to read all those books that I had not had the time to read so far. One of those books was Art since 1900, modernism, antimodernism,
postmodernism by Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, Yve-Alain Bois, and Benjamin H.D. Buchloh. In that book, I noticed how the work Boîte-en-valise by Marcel Duchamp opened an unexplored field and how 40 years later, Robert
Filliou worked to advance this approach to art. I was just reading about his Galerie Légitime when I had a ‘revelation’. In a few seconds, a whole series of ideas for the Davis Museum came to my mind, like a waterfall.
If the Boîte-en-valise contained miniature works by Duchamp, and Galerie Légitime exhibited works by artist friends of Filliou, then the Davis Museum would exhibit works by artists both in a physical form and a virtual one.
It would be a kind of social art network that would highlight its contemporary context.
What was the logic of choosing a ballot box as the museums ‘architecture’?
The ‘architecture’ of the Davis Museum is a ready-made, a slightly modified industrial object that flirts with minimalism and (dangerously) with advertising. But overall, I would like to pose a political reading of the art system
which does nothing but prevent the direct involvement of artists in the institutions. I intended to propose a new way of organizing a museum of contemporary art through a citizens initiative through digital communication platforms and
thus collectively create public value. The museum is a ballot box so when an artist decides to donate a work, this in a sense gives a vote of confidence to the Davis Museum’s project and fulfills its social function, disseminating
the art of artists involved.
Could you explain the relationship between the Davis Museum and the Brazilian anthropophagy movement?
In the beginning, the museum was called The Anthropophagic Davis Lisboa Museum of Contemporary Art and this was a way to update a tendency in the modern Brazilian art tradition. A museum that “symbolically devours the work and
metabolizes it to transform it into a new culture.” This idea has been misunderstood by most of the exhibiting artists. So for its presentation at the Generalitat de Catalunya (the regional government), I hesitated; I removed the
adjective ‘Anthropophagic’ and thus emphasized the contemporary art collection of the Davis Museum. Although the adjective in the title is absent, the idea of ‘swallowing an alien culture” indirectly persists.
What criteria do you usually use to select the works?
The quality of work and ideas are very important. The pieces should be able to create a dialogue with other works from the collection and must be contemporary in form and content. The ‘style’ of having been produced by the end of
the 20th century and early 21st.
How do you decide how to display the Davis Museum?
Just like the Boîte-en-valise and Galerie Légitime, the Davis Museum is a museum in miniature and is portable. However the Davis Museum is a ‘fluid’ museum which can take infinite forms such as cardboard
toys (DTAM I, David Art Toy Museum I), a plastic toy (DTAM II, Davis Art Toy Museum II), a sculpture of lead (DLM, David Lead Museum), a pedestal (DTWM, Davis Tower Museum) or a rock (DRM, Davis Rock
Museum). So, for me, the challenge is to constantly adapt the museum to changing environments.
Fischer, Agustín R. Díez,(Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1982)
BA in Art History - University of Buenos Aires
Interview realized by Skype on July 30th, 2011 as part of a Ph.D. research supported by the CONICET
MUSEUM SHOW - ARNOLFINI - 24 SEPTEMBER–20 NOVEMBER 2011
Including Danger Museum, Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum, Intuitive Galerie, La Galerie Légitime, MER Paper Kunsthalle, Moon Museum, Museo Aero Solar, Museo Salinas, Museum of American Art, Museum of Conceptual Art, Museum of Contemporary
African Art, Museum of Failure, Museum of Franco Besaglia, Museum of Incest, Museum of Learning Things, Museum of Modern Art Syros, Museum of Mott Art inc., Museum of Non-Participation, Museum of Ordure, Museum of Projective
Personality Testing, Museum of Revolution, Museum of Safety Gear for Animals, Museum of Television Culture, Palestinian Museum of Natural History and Humankind, Victoria and Alferd Museum…
One of the most curious tendencies in modern and contemporary art has been that of museums created by artists. Museum Show will be a large-scale exhibition of approximately 40 museums—a museum of museums—displaying this comprehensive
selection of highly idiosyncratic, semi-fictional institutions. It will be the first exhibition to chart this particular tendency in contemporary art.
DISCOVER THE SMALLEST MUSEUM IN THE WORLD; DESIGNER IS BRAZILIAN
A brainchild of the Hispanic-Brazilian artist Davis Lisboa, it is the smallest of the world’s museums. With dimensions of merely 20 cm3, it is installed in the “showroom” of the apartment of its creator, an advertising
designer residing in Barcelona.
Nana de Juan
This miniaturist museum founded on Facebook in 2009 and listed in the official guide of museums of Barcelona's institutions “is a non-profit project that acts as an organizer and producer for virtual and real exhibitions,
fosters investigation and promotes contemporary art shows along with its permanent art exhibition” explains its creator Davis Lisboa to Efe. “The museum’s aim is to select, present, study, propagate and conserve both young
and reputable contemporary artists´ works of art from around the world and also run traveling exhibitions to other cultural centers in order to generate debate, new ideas and reflection” points out Davis Lisboa, a holder
of a collection of 106 pieces of art to date.
The concept of the receptacle is based on the idea of a ballot-box “because each piece of art that an artist donates is like a vote, and given that the ballot-box is mine, each vote is, in essence, a new piece of collection
for the museum”. In addition to quality, a fundamental requirement for any piece of art to be part of this exhibition is to fit into this 20 x 20 x 20 cm acrylic glass and vinyl receptacle. “I’ve converted a ballot-box into art,
into something sacred. It has already hosted quality works of art of fifteen international artists, each usually displayed for about four months such as the current exhibit of clay tablets of the Catalan artist Antoni Socías”
comments Davis Lisboa eagerly.
After twelve years of Fine Arts studies at the Escuela Sant Jordi of Barcelona, Davis Lisboa came across a fascinating book on the history of art titled “Art since 1900”. His further studies into Marcel Duchamp's Boite-in-valise
from 1935 and Robert Fillou's Gallerie Legitime from 1962, both receiving harsh institutional criticism pushed him towards an “inspiration” that he names as ”a waterfall of ideas”. “I jumped up from the chair because I saw that
these artists were the forerunners of what would later become my Davis Museum, a space in line with 21st Century reality, adaptable to social networks like Facebook. It was as if a bulb had switched on in my head, a kind of
sixth-sense intuition” says Lisboa.
Davis Museum in Bristol
Even though the economic crisis has negatively affected the subsidies this peculiar museum received in the past two years, its creator is still content that the cultural center of Bristol has just contacted him for a guest show from
20th to 24th September 2011, an exhibition which he is currently preparing the project for and selecting the 36 works of art he would like to display.
Since its foundation in January 2009, the aim of the Davis Museum has been to launch a virtual-physical social project that would be a collective work of art made up of small dimension pieces that artist would choose to donate.
This museum intends to be a non-profit project as long as the economic reality allows “because we are not an art gallery, we do not sell the works of art, we are a museum” underlines Davis Lisboa.
As far as the benefit for the exhibiting artists is concerned, Lisboa defines it as “being visible to a global art network and also being included in approximately six thousand alert messages sent out to people connected with the world of visual arts”.
An Island of Resistance
Davis assures artists interested in exhibiting their work in the Museum that no matter what form of art their work is, it will be judged in terms of artistic quality, and that the only overall limitation for the pieces is to have a maximum dimension
of 20 cm3. Artists that have already had some work of theirs exhibited in some other museum may be given preference, though this is not a hard and fast rule.
Those interested please write to this email address: info@davismuseum.com. The philosophy of this particular museum according to its creator is that “the market is like a "tsunami" and it will swallow anything it encounters on its way while DM remains
an island of resistance.” An island of resistance that can presently be visited in the apartment of its creator but which has also had its permanent residence in Second Life along with travelling exhibitions to other cultural centres and institutions
and which will be hosted by the Bristol cultural centre at the age of two years and nine months, an event that will mark it's becoming a grown-up.
Terra, Noticias / Agencia EFE, Gente y Cultura, Actualidad, Davis Museum, el museo más pequeño del mundo, Nana de Jaun, 2011, Madrid, Spain.
DAVIS MUSEUM, THE SMALLEST MUSEUM IN THE WORLD
El Centro, Internacional, el museo más pequeño del mundo, Davis Museum, Nana de Juan, Sunday, January 30th 2011, Talca, Chile, pp. 13.
DAVIS MUSEUM, THE SMALLEST MUSEUM IN THE WORLD
El Sol, Informe Especial,Davis Museum, el museo más pequeño del mundo, Nana de Juan, Friday, January 28th 2011, Mendoza, Argentina, pp.12, pp. 13.
CATALUNYA MUSEUMS & CENTERS OF CULTURAL HERITAGE
Culture Museums
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Patrimòni Culturau
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Patrimonio Cultural
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CosmoCaixa Barcelona
Barcelona
Museu de la Ciència de l'obra Social de la Caixa
CIÈNCIA I TÈCNICA · CIÈNCIES NATURALS
C. d'Isaac Newtow, 26 · 08022 Barcelona (Barcelonès)
Tel. 93 212 60 50
www.lacaixa.es/obrasocial" icosmocaixabcn@fundaciolacaixa.es
Davis Museum
The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art
ART
C. Puigmartí, 7, 1r, 2ª · 08012 Barcelona (Barcelonès)
Tel. 93 285 66 22 · 689 75 36 00
www.davismuseum.com · info@davismuseum.com
MUSEUS CATALUNYA,Museus i centres de patrimoni cultural a Catalunya, Direcció General del Patrimoni Cultural, Subdirecció General de Museus I. Catalunya.
Departament de Cultura i Mitjans de Comunicació II. Catalunya. Subdirecció General de Museus III, Primera edició: maig 2010, ISBN 9788493483692.
Dipósit legal: B.32.317-2010, p. 1 i 21.
EL MUSEO MÁS PEQUEÑO DEL MUNDO
Are you looking for original proposals in Barcelona? Well, in Puigmartí 7 you have the Davis Museum, a contemporary art museum with a space of only 20 cm3 and with
its own permanent collection. Created by the artist Davis Lisboa, this sculpture / mini-museum houses until December 31 the exhibition Tablets C2, by Antoni Socías. www.davismuseum.com
Estrada Royo, Pedro, Selected Art, Revista DT Lux, Focus Ediciones, S.L., nº 123, [mensual] octubre de 2010, p. 32.
DAVIS MUSEUM, BARCELONA
Davis Museum, Barcelona
The world’s tiniest museum of contemporary art.
“For over two centuries, a museum has meant a fixed place showing a permanent collection of exhibits. In the same manner, Davis Museum comprises pieces of art with the difference of not being
in the same place all the time; it is a mobile museum. It wanders like showmen of the past used to.”- we can read on the web page of the Portable Museum of Intermediate Spaces.
A similar idea inspired Davis Lisboa, the artist, and owner of the world’s smallest museum of contemporary art when he pondered over its creation. His goal was to transform and re-interpret the
traditional concept and context of a museum.
The artists of the Fluxus movement were the pioneers in experimenting with a portable museum. The idea, however, is credited to a work of art of Marcel Duchamp titled the Boite-en-valise
(1935- 1940), a permanent collection in the interior of a suitcase. The inventor of Davis Museum also considers this work to be the forerunner of his project. The mini-museum in Barcelona is,
in effect, a 20x20x20 cm transparent Poly cube, whose mobile version is simply one of its representative forms. And although the idea was conceived in a room of a downtown flat, Davis Lisboa has
already contracted over 140 international artists for the coming exhibitions and the support of the project. The majority of the 86 tiny pieces of art that comprise the exhibition were sent to Davis
as presents and will be displayed to the public in different points of the world following a series of local presentations. In addition to various international institutions and cultural centers,
the permanent collection of the exhibition is also hosted by Second Life, a testament to the original goal of its inventor: to reach the largest possible public with presentations of contemporary art,
be it in places as remote from art as downtown pedestrian streets or virtual game worlds.
This is a multi-level project. On one hand, it is made up of a permanent collection, part of which is continually replaced in the glass-fronted cabinet-like space of the exhibition room. This periodically
rotated presentation of 15 works of art enables the museum to define itself by dividing the permanent collection into smaller groups. The collection presented in the showcase, however, does not easily allow
for a synthesis in the perception of the complete scale of the pieces of art on display. An obvious factor in this lack of uniformity in the overall image of exhibits is the great variety of the collection
in terms of technical solutions, dimensions and material composition, in addition to the fact that they were originally meant to be exhibited as individual pieces, which makes them virtually impossible to
be integrated under a uniform concept. In this manner, the display area shows small individual pieces of art that are independent from each other, yet coexist in the same space.
Another level of the project is made up of the temporary collection of the display cube museum and its mobile version which, like the Portable Museum of Intermediate Spaces, installs exhibits of contemporary
art in places that often have little or nothing to do with art. Beyond the interest of conventional museum-goers, the mobile museum strives to seek out the attention of further potential public not using
conventional advertisements but through the display of actual works of art. The mini-museum that pops up in different places selects from its permanent collection with names in their line-up of artists such
as Carlos Rezende, Antoni Socías, Karen Chu, Edward Lightner, and Barbara Juan.
A third pillar in the life of this museum is a virtual exhibition titled Virtual Solo Exhibition that can be accessed at www.davismuseum.com where installations and videos of different artists await virtual
visitors´ interest. The Davis Museum of Barcelona uses diverse forms in the attempt of integrating its artists in the international arena of art and help their work gain international context.
The goals of this museum are clear. Each of the three distinct projects described here contribute to making the experience of contemporary art known by a larger public by widening the conventional concepts
of contact with art and its related exhibition spaces.
Stánitz, Zsuzsanna, Davis Museum, Barcelona, Múértó, Foreign exhibitions, HVG, Budapest, Hungary, September, 2010, p. 21.
DE ARTES A Z
With 7,8x7,8x7,8 inches (20x20x20 cm) size, the Davis Museum in Barcelona is the SMALLEST CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM in the world and it has an own collection, which is accompanied the museum in travelers exhibitions.
Dasartes, Artes Visuais em Revista, De Arte a Z, edição 9, O Selo, Grupo Indexa Editora Ltda., Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, abril de 2010, p. 30.
DAVIS MUSEUM, AESTHETIC ANTHROPOFAGIA: INTERVIEW WITH DAVIS LISBOA. BY LIZABEL MÓNICA
Lizabel Mónica:My first question for Davis follows from the line above. Davis Museum is not and does not intend to become a business, but announces that it can become an official project with
the support of an interested institution. Can you tell us about the long-term strategies that DAVIS MUSEUM, The Anthropophagic Davis Lisboa Museum of Contemporary of Art in Barcelona is planning
to survive and / or grow?
Davis Lisboa: It is very important to make it clear that DM is a museum and exclusively focuses on the study and dissemination of contemporary visual arts. It is not an art gallery, therefore it is not
interested in the commercialization of cultural productions or with capital gains. This does not mean that you cannot look for a private or public sponsor or a state grant, so that the project can grow.
DAVIS MUSEUM is being presented to some foundations and some of them show a certain interest in the museum. There are also some people interested in participating with their volunteer work.
One of these people is a Canadian architect who would be willing to design a virtual building for the DAVIS MUSEUM in Second Life. You work hard, so let's be patient, because I believe that the results will come.
LM: Are there / will there be collaboration strategies in the DAVIS MUSEUM with other projects and institutions?
DL: Yes. There have been, there is and will be DAVIS MUSEUM collaborations with other cultural spaces and institutions, both official and alternative. The LACDA, Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts;
the Karura Art Center Museum (MKAC); the Cívic Parc-Sandaru Center and the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú are examples of these collaborations.
LM: Does Davis Lisboa work alone in the production, promotion and organization of DAVIS MUSEUM? Will this always be like this?
DL: When they are virtual exhibitions, I usually work "almost" only in the production, promotion and organization of DAVIS MUSEUM. From time to time I receive specific help from many people, as in the orientation of the project, by Maribel Perpiñán; institutional recognition by Joan Solá; search for financing alternatives by Inés Garriga
Rodriguez and Belén Sánchez; critical reviews by Irene Pomar; video format changes by Anna Accensi Alemany; sending e-mails, by Anna Accensi Alemany; translation and correction of texts in English, by Phyllis Alter
and Darla Farner; rectifications of texts in Spanish and Catalan by Francesc Accensi Alemany; website design by Anna Accensi Alemany and Aurelio Moreno Lanaspa; exhibition space session, dissemination and
constructions of virtual spaces in 3D by Yolanda Arana López, academic dissemination by José Domingo Elias Arcelles, among others.
When they are physical exhibitions, there are always a few more people involved in the project, as in the transport by Lidia García Rojo; interview, editing and broadcast by Catarina Sousa and Bruce Rex;
exhibition space session, organization, posters, flyer, animation, catering, photographic reports, loan of video projectors and other objects by Laura Urrea García and Bruce Rex; economic aid, by the Tasca;
among others.
In addition to all the artists who have already sent their works to be part of the DAVIS MUSEUM collection. In the future, and if a sponsor allows me, I would love to have the collaboration of a critic, a historian and an art restorer.
LM: The opening exhibition of the DAVIS MUSEUM (January 1 - March 31, 2009) was The Museum Is The Work Of Art at Davis Lisboa: the museum-object that can be taken as a kind of prologue to itself.
The object chosen to create this museum is a ballot box, a methacrylate cube used to collect votes in an election. The DAVIS MUSEUM calls itself a museum / sculpture / collective work of art,
and as stated by the website, its exhibition dynamics determine a collective authorship that connects it with relational aesthetics, altering the notion of the Author. Do you want to tell us about this?
DL:The DAVIS MUSEUM is linked to relational aesthetics because it is a work that, contrary to the Conceptual of the 70s, is against the conceptions of art as a closed, abstract, incomprehensible,
remote, inaccessible idea, with a critical stance against visibility and above all, socially useless; on the other hand DAVIS MUSEUM defends the idea of the work as open, concrete, reasonably understandable,
close, moderately accessible, with a position -although critical- "flirtatious" with visibility and above all and the most important: socially useful for people related to the visual arts. DM is not just my artwork,
it is our collective artwork, created with the voluntary participation of various artists and collaborators. They, of course, have the full right to sign it. This idea is less common in the plastic arts than in the
cinema or theater, where the formation of a group is fundamental.
LM:The presence of the word "anthropophagy" in the subtitle to connote the cannibalistic practice of DAVIS MUSEUM, The Anthropophagic Davis Lisboa Museum of Contemporary of Art in Barcelona ,
and its description as a work that "swallows" other works of different artists and disciplines is associated with the project's argument with the São Paulo Modern Art Week of 1922, which burst into Brazilian art
and literature with all the force of the avant-garde modernist movement, as well as the neo-vanguards that they took place in the 1980s and 1990s. What does the Davis Museum take from both moments and
how does it articulate this legacy within the postmodern or neo-modern aesthetic that assimilates or consumes the contemporary gaze?
DL:The DAVIS MUSEUM borrows the term, the concept, of the "anthropophagic" as a cultural legacy of the Brazilian Modernism of 1922. Those artists fought to build a modern Brazilian identity,
shamelessly mixing indigenous cultural traditions, African and European. The DAVIS MUSEUM also wants to rebuild and resize this Brazilian identity, swallowing, like a cannibalistic South American Indian,
the culture that came from abroad, to regurgitate it and transform it into a revealing artistic product. As for the postmodern proposals of the 80s and 90s, the DAVIS MUSEUM enters a critical process of
the limits of authorship and plagiarism, proposing the impossibility of the pure original creation of the romantic imaginary and proposes the hybridization, mixing and total fusion of artistic genres and categories.
LM:In the text by Irene Pomar, dated at Paris, on July 2009, that you place at the beginning of the DAVIS MUSEUM reference page, it says: "The DAVIS MUSEUM acts as a new device for
experimentation, a place where the visitor enters and donated works of art are exhibited, creating a game of feedback... "Is it like that for Davis Lisboa? Can you elaborate on this closed circle that focuses on the
sphere of contemporary cultural production?
DL:Yes, for me, one of the characteristics of the DAVIS MUSEUM is that it creates a small mental maze or puzzle, invisible to the eyes and perceptible only under a thoughtful analysis of its intrinsic
relationships. In relation to how this closed circle that focuses on the sphere of contemporary cultural production, it is enough to remember that all the relational aesthetics of the DAVIS MUSEUM are based
on the use of free platforms and social networks such as Facebook and YouTube, which play a fundamental role, not only in the organization, but also in the strategic contents related to the possibilities and
investigations of New Media Art. Paraphrasing Bruce Rex, curator of LACDA, The digital defines the contemporary.
LM:You mention as precedents to the DAVIS MUSEUM the Boîte-en-valise by Marcel Duchamp and the Galerie légitime by Robert Filliou. Again, we refer to the introductory words of Irene Pomar,
in which it is said that the DAVIS MUSEUM "enjoys the neutrality of the ready-made object" and is beyond Dualism and Symbolism. Does the DAVIS MUSEUM make use of this so-called "neutrality" of
the ready-made? In other words: does DM "believe" in it?
DL:The DAVIS MUSEUM has a neutral aesthetic intention that it shares with ready-made sculpture, which does not mean that it seeks the same from a conceptual point of view. And it is so for a matter
of visual priorities. I think that the DAVIS MUSEUM should be a silent and open physical space, so that the work of other artists can communicate its critical or lyrical content.
LM: In the profile that appears on your website, you say that you are a "multifaceted, multidisciplinary and globalized" artist who works by blurring the boundaries between applied and plastic arts, high
and low culture, art and market, technology and crafts. "There is a whole topic. In the field of hermeneutics that reaches contemporary plastic arts, and that distinguishes between "globalization", as a process
fundamentally triggered from the United States, and "globalization", as an experience of the encounter, seen from a relational notion, between different cultures. Are you aware of this? What is your position on this?
DL:I am not aware of this issue. I have no position on this.
LM: You recently had an incident with the promotion made to the German project Smallery, very similar to the DAVIS MUSEUM, although later in its creation date. The columnists said that Smallery was
the smallest project of its kind in the world, ignoring the DAVIS MUSEUM, which is smaller in proportions. Do you think there is an insurmountable disclosure problem with non-European or non-American art
projects? What is your opinion on this and what dissemination strategies do you have and are planning for DM?
DL: DM is an artistic project born in Barcelona, although it has a multicultural “soul”. The DAVIS MUSEUM was inaugurated on January 1, 2009 and Smallery was inaugurated on August 7, 2009. The first
has a dimension of 20 x 20 x 20 cm, while the second has a dimension of 200 x 200 x 200 cm. Smallery is advertised as possibly the smallest gallery in Berlin, Germany or the world (depending on the publication),
which I think is a very striking title, which demonstrates the ability of its "creators" to avoid criticism from possible "affected" on the dates of creation, size, location of the project. Once I discovered Smallery,
I decided to get in touch with the Spanish newspaper El País and ask for explanations as to why German art projects end up being more popular than Spanish ones. The response of the person in charge of the Cultural
Supplement was that the reporters simply did not know the DAVIS MUSEUM and that the directors would study my case and try to rectify and support the projects born in the peninsula. It is time to wait as events
unfold. Meanwhile, the DAVIS MUSEUM outreach strategy continues to focus on the use of free Internet platforms such as Facebook, Blogger and YouTube. Although I must also inform that DM already has two television
reports that will be broadcast in October 2009. Europa Televisión will broadcast one of them that is estimated to have approximately 1,000,000 viewers in Eurasia and BTV (Barcelona Televisión) that will broadcast
the second report, on the 18th of this month, to the public of the city.
LM:You speak Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan and English. The use of English as the preponderant language in the virtual spaces of the DAVIS MUSEUM, is probably due to the preponderance of this language
in the world. This is so? Any future strategy in this regard?
DL: Yes. All the information of the DAVIS MUSEUM, at the moment, is presented in English, due to the preponderance of this language; Although the possibility that the same information is available in
other languages, such as Catalan, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, or even Mandarin Chinese, is not ruled out. Of course, as long as there is a sponsor who collaborates with the translation of the texts.
LM: As a portable museum, DM takes its sample to other exhibition spaces (museums, biennials, cultural centers and galleries are mentioned on your page). To which spaces has the DAVIS MUSEUM, The Anthropophagic
Davis Lisboa Museum of Contemporary in Art of Barcelona moved since its founding in January 2009? Where will you travel next?
DL: As of today [Editor's Note: This interview was conducted in September 2009], the DAVIS MUSEUM has been exhibited at the LACDA, Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts, in the United States and in the Center
Cívic Parc-Sandaru, in Barcelona, Spain. For the future, there are two resident curators in France who showed their interest in participating in the project. We are studying the possibility of the DAVIS MUSEUM
been exhibited in Paris, but we have not set a date yet.
LM: The DAVIS MUSEUM selection criteria are based on their preference for artists who have at least one of their pieces in a museum or who have participated in an art biennial or important art event.
Does this not go against the intentions of the project to work "erasing the boundaries between applied and plastic arts, high and low culture, art and market, technology and crafts", and limits the scope of the
DAVIS MUSEUM to to reach emerging artists who for strategic reasons or geopolitical circumstances stay out of the market and institutions?
DL: The criteria for selecting DAVIS MUSEUM artists are not rigid. In the information on the DAVIS MUSEUM website, you can read "artists who have at least one work in a museum will have precedence...".
In other words, artists who have a good level will get some advantages such as having priority in the calendar of virtual exhibitions or preference in group exhibitions in physical cultural spaces. This does not mean
that the works of artists that are not in a museum are completely rejected, but that they will have their place and time appropriate to their merits. Some artists selected to have their works in the permanent
collection of contemporary art of the DAVIS MUSEUM come from commercial art, others are self-taught and others do not yet have a very solid curriculum, but all of them, on the other hand, They have shown
that they make good art.
LM: By the time the Desliz Magazine comes out to the virtual space with this interview, you will have closed the sample of PSJM, Khodorkovsky, 2006, animation, 52 '', exhibited at the DAVIS MUSEUM
from July 1 to September 30, 2009, and will be on display 800ºC, by Gê Orthof, 2009, mixed media, 7.8 x 7.8 x 7.8 inches, scheduled for October 1 and until December 31, 2009. What can you tell us about these two samples?
DL: I prefer that people read the manifestos of these artists published on the DAVIS MUSEUM website and on their personal pages, where they will find information about the interesting artistic approaches
of these artists. Personally, I think it is an honor to have them in the DAVIS MUSEUM collection of contemporary art.
LM: It has been a pleasure talking with you and presenting this young project in Desliz. We leave for the end the question of rigor: Plans of the DAVIS MUSEUM, The Anthropophagic Davis Lisboa Museum of
Contemporary in Art of Barcelona?
DL: The immediate plans of the DAVIS MUSEUM refer to finding a patron or a private or public sponsor who wants to invest in the project. In this way, we will be able to improve the exhibition space
of the works, the organization of the calendar and events, create a traveling installation and publish catalogs, initially virtual and, later, printed, that can favor artists and culture in general.
Mónica, Lizabel, Davis Museum, antropofagia estética, Revista Desliz 3, La Habana, Cuba, 2009.
“IS A PLEXIGLAS BOX JUST A SHAPE? DOESN'T IT BECOME CONTENT WHEN WE INTRODUCE ASHES IN IT?"
Chen Zhen, 1990 In allusion to his work Le Poids/Le Vide, 1990
The Davis Lisboa Mini-Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona is an 20-centimeter cube, a ballot box made of transparent Plexiglas. It is an object that contains processes in which it participates,
dissolving its recipient nature in a game of proposals and counterproposals suggested by this element, the “ballot box.”
The Davis Museum Barcelonaa enjoys the neutrality of the ready made object and its qualitative leap beyond Dualism and Symbolism. It creates a new space, a museum with a collection and visitors,
whose central component is the presence of nonstop action. Therefore the Davis Museum acts as a new device for experimentation, a place where the visitor enters and donated works of art are exhibited,
creating a game of feedback; a collective action that uses all available resources, physical and virtual.
The exhibition of the Davis Museum Barcelona at LACDA (Los Angeles Center for Digital Art) is an unprecedented opportunity to discover a collection of the works of fourteen international
artists including María Cañas, Chen Ping, PSJM; a chance to experience up-close this process that adds a new dimension to the notion of format. A mini-museum that gobbles up past and contemporary proposals
and begins a new movement by assuming these sources and absorbing them, escaping the tempting dialectic of art history by allowing the potential of a transparent ballot box let new intuitions be born.
