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Artwork or document? Latin American materials at the Study Centre of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Mela Dávila Freire  and
Pamela Sepúlveda Arancibia
Mela Dávila Freire*
Affiliation:
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Plaça dels Àngels 1, 08001 Barcelona, Spain
Pamela Sepúlveda Arancibia*
Affiliation:
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Plaça dels Àngels 1, 08001 Barcelona, Spain
*
Email: [email protected]
Email: [email protected]

Abstract

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The Study Centre at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona has, since its inception in 2007, amassed a wealth of material relating to Latin American art. Its collecting policy addresses the relationship of contemporary works of art to their documentation and aims to compensate for the lack of a tradition of public collecting of documentary and bibliographic material relating to 20th-century contemporary art practices. The collection now includes influential artist publications such as concrete poetry, magazines, mail art, books of photography and even fiction written by artists, as well as special materials from letters to photographic negatives, alongside information from galleries, cultural spaces and artistic centres.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 37 , Special Issue 4: Special issue: resources for Latin American art , 2012 , pp. 15 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 2012

References

Notes

1. The MACBA Independent Study program (IEP) is a two-year program whose first graduates attended from 2006 to 2007. Its objective is to develop reflection about the field of artistic practice that links Art with Human Sciences, and with socio-critical intervention, investigating the fields of critical theory, pedagogy and museum studies.

2. It is complex to define these two terms accurately. To put it simply, and without noting exceptions, we understand by artist publications all documents, generally printed, but also photocopies, manuscripts, etc., on a two-dimensional support, usually published in series and whose authors are individual or collectives of visual artists. The term therefore includes not only artists’ books, but also other ephemera formats, including posters, invitations, hand sheets, leaflets, magazines, etc, and also editions printed on fabric (T-shirts, for example), on wood or on other non-paper materials. We use the term special materials, a definition with vaguer limits than the previous one, to refer to all those materials which cannot be classified as a ‘publication’ – for example, a collection of letters from personal papers, a series of photographic negatives – or which are not works by an artist, but whose documentary value is due to other reasons, such as the fact that they relate to the creation of the Museum of Contemporary Art, forerunner of MACBA.

3. MACBA Study and Documentation Centre, On the margins of art: creation and political commitment, exhibition held July 10 to November 8, 2009, curated by Guy Schraenen.

4. MACBA Study and Documentation Centre, The malady of writing: a project on text and speculative imagination, exhibition held November 20, 2009 to April 25, 2010, curated by Chus Martinez.

5. Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Universal archive: the condition of the document and the modern photographic Utopia, exhibition held October 23, 2008 to January 6, 2009, curated by Jorge Ribalta.