A Brussels Museum Backs Off Its Plan to Split Its Director Job Into Two After Activists Protested the Move as Sexist artnet.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from artnet.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The week in art news – German culture minister calls for national strategy on Benin Bronzes apollo-magazine.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from apollo-magazine.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Trouble Afoot in Montpellier: Nicolas Bourriaud on Museum Politics
The French curator and critic on founding Montpellier Contemporain, the future of institutions and why museums will become editorial platforms
Last autumn, French media reported that the recently-founded MO.CO, Montpellier Contemporain, was experiencing a shake-up. Montpellier’s new mayor wants to redirect the institution’s operating budget, and the contract of its founding director, the celebrated critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud, seems to be in jeopardy. Over email, I asked Bourriaud about his recent work, the situation in Montpellier and the future of museums.
Pablo Larios: In 2019, you opened MO.CO Montpellier Contemporain: an ambitious, comprehensive institution in the south of France that spans a school, exhibition spaces and an artist’s residency. What was your vision for MO.CO and what sets it apart?
The Palais de Tokyo in Paris, pictured here during the 2018-19 exhibition Carte Blanche to Tomás Saraceno, launched a Change.org petition to lift Covid-19 restrictions on French museums and galleries Photo: Alina Grubnyak
Around 100 leading figures in the French art scene have published an open letter calling on the culture minister Roselyne Bachelot to lift Covid-19 restrictions on the country’s galleries and museums, allowing them to reopen “as widely and as soon as possible”. The Change.org petition, launched by the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, has garnered more than 2,000 signatures in two days.
Signatories include Emma Lavigne, the president of the Palais de Tokyo; Maja Hoffmann, the founder of the Luma Foundation; Quentin Bajac, the director of the Jeu de Paume; Nicolas Bourriaud, managing director of Montpellier Contemporain; Chiara Parisi, director of the Centre Pompidou Metz; Bice Curiger, director of the Fondation Vincent Van Gogh Arles and Je