The next Max and Iris Stern International Symposium at the Musée d’art contemporain will focus on the place of risk in modern and contemporary art museums: how do these institutions accept, avoid, embrace, or suppress it?
This is among the current and wide-ranging issues faced by museum collections: from concerns around acquisition protocols, conservation, preservation and exhibition standards, the growing urgency of technological obsolescence and the degradation of living organisms, to the positioning of museums with regard to political issues, and threats brought on by the climate crisis and armed conflicts.
Addressing the issue of risk raises several questions: How do artistic, curatorial, archival, conservation, and restoration practices navigate between notions of risk and care? In a context where museum collections are based on the material durability and stability of objects, how do museums that acquire unstable and changing works handle these new risks? Or is the opposition between risk and care a false dichotomy? Will works that have the necessary resources to survive their own programmed obsolescence form their own new de facto canon? In cases such as these, what role does documentation play?
By bringing together a number of stakeholders with multiple, complementary perspectives and experiences, the 17th Max and Iris Stern International Symposium will present an overview of current practices and examine the notion of risk-taking in a convivial setting conducive to discussion and exchange.
Participants: Abbas Akhavan, eunice bélidor, Nuria Carton de Grammont, Karen Cheung, Jérôme Denis, Guillaume Désanges, Emma Dickson, Caterina Florio, Annie Gauthier, Nasrin Himada, Pip Laurenson, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Tanya Lukin-Linklater, François Morelli, Rasha Salti, Stephan Schulz, Tino Sehgal and Guillaume Tremblay.
Curators: Mélanie Boucher and Marie Fraser, in collaboration with Mark Lanctôt, Curator of the collection at the MAC.
This event is organized in collaboration with the CIÉCO Research and Inquiry Group as part of its New Uses of Collections in Art Museums Partnership activities, the UQAM Research Chair in Curatorial Studies and Practices, and the UQO Équipe Art et Musée.