Van Abbemuseum

In March 2010 the first meeting between a group of experts from the region and the collaborating institutions was hosted by the Your-space platform at the Van Abbemuseum, occurring alongside the 18-month Play Van Abbe project in which the museum reflects on many concerns relating to the redisplaying of its permanent collection by guest artists and curators. The ideas of copyright, repetition, avant-gardism and the role of the artist in contemporary practice within public art institutions, are amongst only a few of the subjects this programme addresses through the reconstructing of previous exhibitions and the complete recontextualising of museum acquisitions. The Autonomy Project acts as an ideal site within which to negotiate the finer points made within Play Van Abbe and will also lead to the contestation of the museum’s role as a mirror of society or as an authoritive taste-maker for it. The Your-space was initially set up to give space to these very key questions on the specific grounds of the city of Eindhoven and thus provides an ideal launch-pad for the Autonomy Project, March 2010.

image by Ingmar Swalue