Between Exhibition, Depository and Archive: The Artist as a Museum Collections Curator? The Case of Stefano Arienti and Massimo Bartolini at Museion of Bolzano

Abstract

Considering the reinterpretations of the contemporary museum practices, the artist as a curator is currently a figure at the center of the critical debate that has arisen around the history of the exhibitions, in particular considering its potential to bring the precarious nature of exhibitions to its limits (ed. Filipovic, 2017 ) and its possibilities to move with extreme freedom between roles and types. This article aims at investigating one of its specific declination, focused on the collections and archives of the museum, starting from a case study, the project -2 +3 (2010) that Stefano Arienti and Massimo Bartolini realised at the Museion, Bolzano. For the whole duration of the project a selection of the collection has been brought by the artists, without changing the order and arrangement and keeping all the daily activities, from the warehouses inside the exhibition spaces. Intervening on what usually remains hidden from the public eye, Arienti and Bartolini through movements, installations, displays and new artworks created for the occasion had in fact staged a new relationship with the pieces of the collection, while questioning the functions and mechanisms that are part of the museum, without modifying them. Particularly significant in his desire to move the boundaries until the exhibition set up and artistic installation coincide, through a single, coherent conceptual operation, this project will be investigated starting from historicized models - from Andy Warhol Raid the Icebox I (1969) to Fred Wilson Mining the museum (1992-93) - considering the contemporary Italian context and the models that stress out the concept of exhibition itself, as well as the ones of collection and archive.