The Portable Museum

What is a Portable Art Museum?

History and Influence

Marcel DuchampFluxusInside the White Cube

The John Erickson Museum of Art (JEMA)

Future Possibilities

Interview with Director of JEMAArt Basel MIAMI Discussion

What is a Portable Museum?

designed to be moveable

unfixed transitional

spatial

challenging the

traditional

various physical forms

The Portable Museum

site specific

The Portable Museum History and Influence

Marcel Duchamp

Boite-en-valise

Miniature exhibition in a portable box. 1935: Twenty boxes in a brown leather carrying case containing 69 small scale reproductions of his work..

1950s-60s: Unfolding boxes containing standing frames, readymades hung in a vertical gallery, loose prints and one “original”.

Undermines exclusivity and authenticity.Questions the “original” artwork, classification, presentation and the institution of the museum.

History and Influence

The Portable Museum

George MaciunasFounding member of Fluxus.

Fluxus boxes and Flux-Kits

Small boxes containing art and objects.designed and assembled by artists such as Christo, Yoko Ono and George Brecht.

George BrechtGames and Puzzles! Name Kit

Multiple ready-made boxes resembling surrealism.Distributed by mail order.

FLUXUSAvant-garde movement of the 1960’sPlayful subversion of previous art traditions.

Inside the White CubeThe Ideology of Gallery SpaceBy Brian O’Doherty

The Portable Museum History and Influence

The white cube convention for gallery design.

Exhibit space is not a neutral container. It is an aesthetic object in and of itself.

content within a context context itself the content

The spatial arrangement over determines—consumes—the works to the degree that context becomes content.

There is a need to reflect and restage this space.

The Portable Museum has the possibility of destroying the white cube.

The Portable Museum JEMA

A location variable museum.Created by the artist Sean Miller.In a 16 x 12 x 9 in aluminum case.

Exhibited throughout America, Germany, Italy and Ireland.

Exhibits last roughly 9hours and 15 min but may beheld over by popular demand.

JEMA is not just a museum.

Mission is to display and collect innovative and provocative contemporary art and offer exhibitions that allow people to think differently about the nature of art and art practice.

The Portable Museum JEMA

Maintains all necessary museum functions:

StaffVisitor response and mail roomArchives and permanent collectionAll exhibition material available onlineEducational activities Music Performances

The Portable Museum JEMA

YOKO ONOIMAGINE PEACE

Opening at Belfast, Ireland’s “Peace Wall” that divides the Nationalist and Loyalist communites in Belfast.

Including Wish Trees Visitors write wishes on paper adding them to the trees. Wishes will be send to theIMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland.

The Portable Museum JEMA

Andrea Robbins and Max Becher Bavarian By Law is in Place

Opening in Leavenworth, Washington during Mayfest

The Portable Museum JEMA

Sergio Vega High Art Miami Art Basel

The Portable Museum JEMA

4 exhibition galleries were carried exploring themes related to marching, walking, parading, exhibiting viewing and guarding art.

New wings of galleries opened in SoHo NYC during the Art Parade 2007

The Portable Museum JEMA

JEMA disavows the site specific traditional methods of displaying visual art.

Elitism of the museum questioned by allowing any passerby to partake in an artistic experience.

Dematerializes the art institution and uses it as a tool.

Challenges the viewer, the artist and the museum.

Gives the artist an affordable, efficient avenue of artisticexpression.

Continuous movement allows intercommunication on alocal and global scale.

Revitalizing the role of the curator, the artist, the viewer.

Breaks the white cube by purposefully encouraging the outside space to interact with the exhibition and art itself.

The Portable Museum Future Possibilities

Interview with Sean Miller, Director of JEMA

What sort of forms do you envision portable museums will take on in the future?

“In the future, museums will become vastly more creative with the way they control and define space and I hope artists and audiences are able to ‘follow’ (both literally and metaphorically). There is still a universe of possibility here so much is possible and unexplored. I think also the professions of artist and curator are in a state of flux and I think in the future we will become more sophisticated in our understandings of the way(s) these two roles can be combined and redefined. George Marciunas in Fluxus, Rirkrit Trivanijia, Yoko Ono, Lygia Clark, and Hans Obrist are all people that show possibilites toward a more sophisticated view of authorship and the artist.”

The Portable Museum Future Possibilities

Destroying the white cube as a natural habitat for exhibiting art.

Redefining the role of the curator and the artist.

Museums in cell phones.

The distributable, collaborative museum.

The Art Museum as a new artistic genre.

The Artist’s Museum.

The Future of the Museum: The Portable MuseumRaphael Montañez Ortiz, Pedro Reyes, Peter Saville, Katerˇina Seda