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Durante la década de los noventa se inauguraron en el Estado español dos proyectos museísticos de ambición y proyección internacional: el MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona y el Guggenheim Bilbao. Por su naturaleza público-privada ambos museos podrían ser enmarcados bajo el calificativo de «museos neoliberales», una denominación que se aproxima a la establecida por la crítica e historiadora del arte Rosalynd E. Krauss en 1990 en «The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism Museum». Mediante una lectura detallada de este texto y a partir de obras de la llamada crítica institucional de la colección del MACBA este ensayo analiza las implicaciones que se derivan de la construcción de estos dos museos bajo el paradigma de la arquitectura del arte minimal y el modo en que su funcionamiento se aleja del necesario para afrontar la crisis civilizatoria derivada del colapso ecológico. Desde esta perspectiva ecosocial ni el «efecto Guggenheim» ni el MACBA entendido como reclamo de atracción turística resultan en la actualidad sostenibles en términos medioambientales o sociales. A modo de conclusión se propone una imagen como ficción especulativa para empezar a imaginar un posible museo ecosocial.

The contemporary art world is characterized by precarious and intermittent forms of employment such as subcontracting and freelancing. Non-paid work is also common in the arts sector either in the form of internships or uncompensated exhibiting, writing and curating. In this article we analyse subversion in the context of artistic activism as a resistance strategy against labour relations within contemporary capitalism. As a case study, we present a critical analysis of two works by artist Joshua Schwebel, Subsidy (2015) and Médiation Culturelle (2017-2018), which aimed to take advantage of the institutional exhibition context to not only raise awareness about hidden aspects of labour practices common among art institutions but also to create real change and empower workers. Taking into account capitalism’s adaptability and its undermining of traditional forms of resistance, we argue that artistic activism plays a crucial role in pursuing counter-hegemonic struggle. By analysing and comparing both projects we have concluded that subversion is used as the broader strategy, whereas disruption, dialogue and displacement are used as tactics. This research also establishes context as a fundamental element for artistic activism works and the necessity to adapt strategies to maximize possibilities of achieving social transformation.

Nel 2018 il Brooklyn Museum di New York ha annunciato la decisione di assumere una donna bianca come curatrice della sua collezione africana provocando le reazioni nel mondo dell’attivismo. Collettivi come Decolonize This Place, da sempre impegnati per ottenere maggiore inclusione nelle istituzioni pubbliche, hanno espresso la necessità di un cambiamento delle narrazioni e delle pratiche museali, considerate ancora come fortemente etnocentriche. Questo episodio si inserisce in un più ampio fenomeno. Considerato il potenziale didattico dei musei ed il fatto che rappresentano l’ideale di libertà democratica, gli attivisti hanno tentato negli ultimi decenni di ingaggiare un confronto diretto con queste istituzioni. Attacchi sui social media, manifestazioni e lettere aperte sembrano avere in questo contesto lo stesso obiettivo: decolonizzare i musei dall’esterno. Attraverso l’analisi comparativa delle narrazioni e delle pratiche curatoriali adottate da due importanti musei anglosassoni, la Tate Modern e il Booklyn Museum, ed utilizzando la critica post-coloniale come punto di riferimento teorico, questo articolo tenta di comprendere l’impatto che il movimento degli attivisti sta avendo nel dibattito istituzionale su accessibilità e inclusione nei musei.

When speaking of Institutional Critique, is almost instantaneous the reference that comes to mind: Hans Haacke, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren and Michael Asher. These artists, emerged in the mid 1960s, became known as the first generation of Institutional Critique, after Benjamin Buchloch defined their critical work in that category. However, thinking about the same period of artistic production in Brazil, could it be said that there was also the emergence of artistic practices which could be read within the concept of Institutional Critique? To think about this question, I focus this paper on O Sermão da Montanha – Fiat Lux from the artist Cildo Meireles. I will try to observe in this work how the issues of Institutional Critique appear in Brazil, considering the different social and political contexts of Latin America, the United States and Europe (the latter, places where this concept emerged and whose artists became canons of this practice).

Oscar Bony was a key figure in the generation of avant-garde artists who famously broke with the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in the wake of censorship at Experiencias ’68. He was also the official photographer for RCA’s affiliate record label in Argentina between 1967 and 1973, producing publicity for a new wave of rock n’ roll bands and solo popular music acts including Los Gatos and Arco Iris. Attending to key phases in his artistic oeuvre as well as close readings of his expertly crafted popular images, this article attempts to bridge these seemingly irreconcilable aspects of Bony’s practice. At first glance, his rock photography, known as el estilo Bony, has little relation to his art, and is perhaps even its political antithesis: “creative” work in the service of a top-down business model. Yet a closer look at both endeavors yields a lasting interplay between flesh and concept—at the grain of the work, a dialectic between incontrovertible index and crafted, calculated image—that was the artist’s central preoccupation in the fraught decade between the military coups. As such, Bony provides an opportunity to recover a category often absent from the Argentine art of this moment: the body, factual and libidinal.

The current socio-economic situation triggers a strong debate on the role and action of the art institutions in society. This article examines a new concept of museum – the “dispersed museum” – proposed by Charles Esche (born 1962), which forms the basis of the Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, Holland) programme. Using Esche’s theoretical reflections on the museum in the 21st century as a starting point, and through a comparative analysis of a selection of projects, exhibitions and events from different historical periods (60s, 2000s and 2010s), this study seeks to clarify the influence of the idea of “open museum” in the construction of this new alternative museum concept. The “open museum” was developed throughout the 60s as an alternative to the “museum-sanctuary”, while the “dispersed museum” emerged as a reaction against the museum as a place of leisure and consumption that satisfies certain political and economic interests. To that end, I have collected and analysed press articles, first-hand accounts from the exhibition curators, interviews, iconographic material, and exhibition catalogues. This article reveals that, although Charles Esche did not mention it in his essays and interviews, he recovers the essence of the original idea of the “open museum” and reworks it in order to expand it and give it new life. Finally, bearing in mind the fate of the “open museum”, I have questioned the future of the “dispersed museum” as conceived by the English curator.

Abstract This paper addresses the current co-optation of street art into an uncritical aesthetic supplement to the process of neoliberal urbanisation, by focusing on its unresolved relation with its own site. This is done in three steps. First, via a perambulating immersion into the complexity of a specific site. Second, via a critical engagement with the form and politics of contemporary street art. Third, via a strategic speculation on the relation between the notions of art, urban and site. Street art’s current impasse, I argue, paradoxically depends on its incapacity to become properly urban. A urban-specific street art, I contend, is not a decorative veneer nor an enchanting disruption to dramatic processes of urbanisation: it is a force-field in which these processes are made visible, experienceable, and thus called into question. The ‘Olympic’ works of JR and Kobra in Rio de Janeiro, and the iconoclastic performance by Blu in Berlin, are used to illustrate and complement the argument.