The Absent Museum

The Absent Museum is a large thematic exhibition catalogue that explores the absence of museums in public debates today. What relationship can exist between historical awareness and aesthetic commitment? How can artists maintain the tension between globalisation’s paradoxes and history’s turbulences, and their individual sensibilities and voices? Works and new productions by around 50 artists – both contemporary and those active in the recent past – map what is at stake for museums and the societies that inspire them.

With Francis Alÿs, Archives of the Universal Embassy, Younes Baba-Ali, Jo Baer, Monika Baer, Sammy Baloji, Guillaume Bijl, Dirk Braeckman, Marcel Broodthaers, stanley brouwn, Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel, Marlene Dumas, Jimmie Durham, Jana Euler, Olivier Foulon, Michel François, Ellen Gallagher, Mekhitar Garabedian, Isa Genzken, Jef Geys, Jos de Gruyter & Harald Thys, Thomas Hirschhorn, Carsten Höller, Cameron Jamie, Ann Veronica Janssens, Martin Kippenberger, Goshka Macuga, Mark Manders, Lucy McKenzie, Wesley Meuris, NÁstio Mosquito, Jean-Luc Moulène, Le Mur, Oscar Murillo, Otobong Nkanga, Felix Nussbaum, Willem Oorebeek, Marina Pinsky, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Gerhard Richter, Walter Swennen, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Luc Tuymans, Peter Wächtler, Christopher Williams, Nil Yalter.

Edited by Dirk Snauwaert. with Contributions by Manuel Borja-Villel, Catherine David, Charles Esche & Dirk Snauwaert.

Wiels, 20 April – 13 August 2017