Exhibition

The Museum as Toolbox exhibition marks the conclusion of the MUSEUM AS TOOLBOX research project, which runs from 2015 to 2017 as a collaboration between Kunsthaus Graz, KUMU in Tallinn, MSU Zagreb, Museion Bozen/Bolzano and Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź. Different versions of the exhibition adapted for the local context will be shown at each of these institutions between spring and autumn 2017.

Museum as Toolbox is engaged in building a network of artists, institutions and young people in various museums and exhibition centres of contemporary art throughout Europe. Its scope includes the search for an interactive, very barrier-free toolbox that will forge a contemporary vision of the museum and its communications. Shaped by current developments such as socially engaged art or relational aesthetics, the experience and mediation of art are explored in a direct exchange between equal partners inside and outside of the institution.

Everything that is presented, collected and conveyed by a museum is, in the first instance, a communication and seeks to enter into a dialogue. With this in mind, the exhibition’s goal is to bring about an activation of all of the parts that make up a “talking museum”: it links up museum collections with commissioned interventions produced during residencies at the museums and takes shape around the concepts of activation and experience, also integrating them into its presentation. An active group of young people, the curatorial team, museum educators and the marketing team collaborated to develop the concept of an open construction plan, of the museum as a medium.

Artistic intervention produces an exhibition design tailored to each venue, an alphabet of intervention that makes the visionary “act of creating” the focus for the public, too. The result is a toolbox, an instrument for the exchange of experiences that can still be used long after the exhibition has ended, thanks to a jointly produced catalogue, a Youtopia channel and open discourse formats that accompany the exhibition.

Works from the respective collections are re-contextualised for each exhibition setting.

Participating artists: Oaza Collective, Marcin Polak, Aldo Giannotti, Lasnaidee, Luigi Coppola
Curated by Frida Carazzato, Lukasz Zaremba, Katrin Bucher Trantow, Ana Skegro, Maarin Ekterman – together with the groups of young people participating at their museums.

Zagreb: 14 January – 14 February 2017

Bozen: 9 March – 9 April 2017

Tallinn: 21 April – 21 May 2017

Łódź: 27 May – 27 June 2017

Graz: 28 September – 29 October 2017
Opening: 27 September 2017, 7 p.m.

in MSU Zagreb

in Museion Bozen/Bolzano

in Kumu in Tallinn

in Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź

in Kunsthaus Graz