RESEARCH PROJECT

Based on historic and theoretical research, CARIM draws from the international history of conceptual art, as well as from recent conceptual practices, projects and artworks solutions and tools, that have reformed museological display and institutional critique.

CARIM responds to the recent UNESCO museum-sheet: 'Museums lie at the heart of UNESCO’s mission to promote dialogue, peace and sustainable development through culture'. By proposing that conceptual art can reinforce the social responsibility of museums, CARIM provides methodologies that address UNESCO'S 3 main missions of museums: education, cultural inspiration and social dialogue. 'Museums are not only places where our shared heritage is preserved – they are key spaces of education, inspiration and dialogue. They play an essential role in fostering social cohesion and a sense of collective memory. 'They hold up a mirror to society, introduce visitors to alternative points of view and foster creativity, respect for diversity and a culture of peace'. (UNESCO, 2022). Museums hold a pivotal rôle in granting the access of all citizen to cultural production, towards correcting social, economic and territorial inequalities. The project searches to demonstrate that artistic practice and artistic education (especially in what concerns conceptual art) are essential tools for developing citizenship skills and awareness.

This research project develops various action lines : theoretical research (published in articles and en edited volume), actions and interventions in museums and heritage institutions devoted to historic and contemporary heritage, seminars and meetings, artistic interventions. It also systematizes a repertoire of recommendations (mostly for the Portuguese) museum context, where contemporary and especially conceptual art can deliver innovatory solutions.

Overall CARIM is dedicated to chrystalizing approaches, visions and creative strategies for more and more turning museums into dialogic spaces – based on social actions, innovation, practice and experimentation, extrapolating the concern for object display.

Background Image: Benin. The collection at the Weltkulturen Museum. Perspectives. Weltkulturen Museum 2023.
Photo: Wolfgang Günzel . On the left is the work of Osaze Amadasun

Through its diversified OUTPUTS, CARIM draws from recent and historic artistic practices engaging in museological critique.

CARIM researches especially on the revolutionary role that was played by conceptual art in the understanding of heritage – and shows its particular importance – a theoretical question not explored so far. It will show that (from all contemporary art forms) it was conceptual art that crucially advanced the critical redefinition of the nature, value, display, role and agency of the heritage object and how it furthered the development of new methodologies in museum practice since the beginning of the 20th century.

Structure: 

1. Systematizing and theoretically analyzing essential examples from conceptual art

2. Drawing from these recent and historic cases innovatory methods and solutions of communication and display that can be adapted to heritage institutions in Portugal with the objective to contribute to a more critical, de-colonial, renovated and inclusive heritage transmission. 

3. CARIM will involve its partner institutions in the implementation of some events, actions, practices and interventions in material culture museums in Portugal, testing out some of these proposals. Based on observation in Portuguese museums and collaboration with social and cultural actors, CARIM will develop an applied tool kit to be proposed to museums in Portugal with concrete solutions towards a creative and critical rethinking of these institutions.

These will contain:

  • Repertoire of solutions/ devices of contextual, inclusive, socially aware display of material and immaterial heritage in permanent and temporary exhibitions in museums.

  • Repertoire of activities for the educative programs for adults and children in museums.

The project incorporates insights, artistic and curatorial work obtained in the framework of following previous project:
EXODUS STATIONS (www.exodustations.com)
and
ART AND THE MUSEOLOGIC DISPOSITIVE. INCLUSSIVE COMMUNICATION - a research project
both coordinated by Marta Jecu.

  • EXODUS STATIONS (www.exodustations.com) is a series of ongoing curatorial projects oin which artists are invited to research in the visual archives of material culture museums (History, ethnology, natural history etc.). The project counts so far with 6 research and curatorial projects developed in museums in Portugal, Germany, Romania and France :

Museu Carlos Machado, Azores Portugal,

CIAJG Centro Internacional José de Guimarães, Guimaraes, Portugal

Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France,

Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

Muzeul Taranului Roman, Bucharest, Romania

Iwalewahaus, Bayreuth, Germany

  • MUSDIS Project was based on a French- Portuguese academic collaboration (FMSH, Paris and ULHT), already analyzed the role of conceptual art for museology and situated them in a Sociomuseological perspective, which is developed especially at the Museology Department at Universidade Lusofona.

MUSDIS also included a conference at FMSH Paris : Reinventing Museology. The role of Contemporary Art [Symposium]. Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH), Paris, France.

https://www.fmsh.fr/en/our-work/reinventing-museology-role-conceptual-art

ARTISTS, HERITAGE AND THE MUSEUM – a group exhibition at the Natural History Museum Lisbon, included in the framework of the SAISON FRANCE-PORTUGAL 2022.

Artists :
José de Guimarães; Julien Creuzet; Kiluanji Kia Henda; 
Mariana Caló e Francisco Queimadela; Sergio Verastegui; Susana Gaudêncio e Théo Mercier

Curators: Marta Jecu, Sofia Marçal

https://martajecu.com/exhibition-curating/artists-heritage-and-the-museum/

Background Image: Benin. The collection at the Weltkulturen Museum. Perspectives. Weltkulturen Museum 2023.
Photo: Wolfgang Günzel . On the left is the work of Osaze Amadasun

REFERENCES

  • Baker, J. 2017. Sentient Relics: Museums and Cinematic Affect, NY: Routledge

  • Cass, N., Park G. & Powell A. eds. 2020. Contemporary Art in Heritage Spaces. London and New York: Routedge.

  • Cass, N., Park, G. & Powell, A. (Eds.). 2020. Contemporary Art in Heritage Spaces. London and New York: Routedge.

  • Clifford, J. 1997. “Museums as Contact Zones”, in Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, 188–219. Cambridge: Harvard University Press Ingold, T. 2007. “Materials against Materiality”. Archaeological Dialogues 14 (1) 1–16

  • Dahlgren, P., Hermes.J. 2020. “The Democratic Horizons of the Museum" In Museum Theory, ed. Witcomb A Message K, 117-138. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell MacDonald, S. 2015. 'The Trouble with the Ethnological' in Museum Experiments. Berlin: Nicolai

  • Deliss, C. 2014. Collecting and Curating Life’s Unknowns: Past Ethnography and Current Art Practice. https://www.internationaleonline.org/research/decolonising_practices/27_collecting_lifes_unknowns/

  • Dudley, S. 2020. “What (or where) is the museum object?”. In Museum Theory, edited by Andrea Witcomb, and Kylie Message, 41-62. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell

  • Enwezor, O. 2015. All the World's Futures, curatorial statement of the 56th International Art Exhibition, https://universes.art/en/venice-biennale/2015/tour/all-the-worlds-futures/curatorial-statement

  • Filipovic, E. 2011. ‘A museum that is not’. E-flux. www.e-flux.com/journal/view/50.

  • Foster, H. 1995. ‘The Artist as Ethnographer?’ in The traffic in culture: refiguring art and anthropology, edited by G. Marcus, and F. Myers, 302–309. Berkeley, Los Angeles

  • Fowles. S. 2016. “The perfect subject (postcolonial object studies)”. Journal of Material Culture 21 (1): 9-27.

  • Globus, D. ed. 2011. Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader. London: Ridinghouse.

  • Goldie, P. & Schellekens E. 2010. Who's Afraid of Conceptual Art?. London, New York: Routledge.

  • Groys, Boris. 2014. On the New. London:  Versobooks.

  • Hetherington, K. 2020. “Foucault and the Museum”. In Museum Theory, edited by Andrea Witcomb and Kylie Message, 21-40. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

  • Jecu, M. 2020. The conceptual Museologic Object. https://exodusstations.com/library/related-content/article/the-conceptual-museologic-object/

  • Knudsen, B., Kølvraa. C. 2021. “Affective Infrastructures of Re-emergence?”Heritage and Society 12 (1)

  • Message, K. 2009. “Museums in the Twenty-first Century”, Konsthistorik Tidsskri􀀁 78(4): 204-221

  • Newman, M. & Bird. J. eds. 1999. Rewriting Conceptual Art. London: Reaction Books.

  • Osborne, P. 1999. “Conceptual art and/as Philosophy”. In Rewriting Conceptual Art, edited by Micheal Newman, and Jon Bird. London: Reaction Books.

  • Overbey, K. E. 2012. “Postcolonial”. In Studies in Iconography (33), Special Issue Medieval Art History Today—Critical Terms, 145-156. Michigan: Board of Trustees of Western University

  • Papastergiadis, N. 2018. “From Cosmopolis to Cosmopolitan Spaces”. E-Flux Architecture. http://www.e-flux.com/architecture/urban-village/169806/from-Cosmopolis-to-cosmopolitan-spaces/

  • PNA (Plano Nacional das Artes). 2022. https://www.pna.gov.pt/objetivos/

  • Primo, J., Moutinho, M. 2020. Introdução à Sociomuseologia, Lisboa, Edições Lusófonas, pp. 558

  • Primo, J., Moutinho, M. 2021. Teoria e Prática da Sociomuseologia. Lisboa: Edições Lusófonas

  • Primo, J., Moutinho, M. 2022. 'Acervos coloniais'. In Boletim Icom Portugal, Série III 2021 N.º17

  • Putnam, J. 2001. Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium. London: Thames & Hudson.

  • Soh Bejeng Ndikung, B. 2017. “The Globalized Museum” Mousse Magazine 58 (April-May)

  • Taylor, J.; Gibson, L. 2017. “Digitisation, digital interaction and social media” In International Journal of Heritage Studies Vol. 23, 2017 - Issue 5

  • Thomas, N. ed. 2010. “The Museum as Method”. Museum Anthropology 33(1) April: 6 – 10.

  • Tunbridge J. E. & Ashworth, J.. 1997. Dissonant heritage: The management of the past as a resource in conflict, Belhaven: Belhaven Press.

  • UNESCO. 2015. Recommendation concerning the Protection and Promotion of Museums and Collections.

  • UNESCO. 2022. Museums Info Sheet

  • Verges, F.. 2016. The Slave at the Louvre. Nka 2016 (38-39): 8–13

  • Witcomb, A. & Message K. eds. 2020. Museum Theory. West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell.

Background Image: Benin. The collection at the Weltkulturen Museum. Perspectives. Weltkulturen Museum 2023.
Photo: Wolfgang Günzel . On the left is the work of Osaze Amadasun