A Commonplace Museum

“The posters produced by the ATELIER POPULAIRE are weapons in the service of the struggle and are an inseparable part of it. Their rightful place is in the centers of conflict, that is to say, in the streets and on the walls of the factories. To use them for decorative purposes, to display them in bourgeois places of culture or to consider them as objects of aesthetic interest is to impair both their function and their effect. This is why the ATELIER POPULAIRE has always refused to put them on sale. Even to keep them as historical evidence of a certain stage in the struggle is a betrayal, for the struggle itself is of such primary importance that the position of an “outside” observer is a fiction which inevitably plays into the hands of the ruling class. That is why these works should not be taken as the final outcome of an experience, but as an inducement for finding, through contact with the masses, new levels of action, both on the cultural and the political plane.” ATELIER POPULAIRE

“It is my experience that, in conferences bringing scientists and artists together, the former are considerably more ignorant about art than the latter are about science. The impression is sometimes given that some scientists at least regard art as being about making pretty pictures, and seem to base their understanding of what, for example, visual art is about on the activities of a small group of then-marginalized French painters working between the 1850s and the 1880s, the Impressionists. Of course, in that it disavows any explicit engagement with politics or culture, and in that it is concerned with the purely optical, Impressionism is obviously congenial to the abstraction and ahistoricity of scientific thinking. This is of course grossly unfair, as there are many scientists who understand and engage with art properly, but I believe not entirely inaccurate.” Charlie Gere, ‘Research as Art’ in Art Practice in a Digital Culture.

“The mass audience is, in a way, confirmation that the museum is the most democratic cultural institution of all, attracting by far the widest cross-section of the population. Especially with free admission, the museum is truly open to everyone who cares to enter. Unlike opera, for example, the museum does not involve its audience in a complicated an intimidating game of class, money or social aspirations. Being in a museum, one does not have to pass muster or dress up, and there is no peer pressure. The museum is, as far as the interaction between those visiting is concerned, virtually neutral; that is to say, visitors remain comparatively invisible to each other. And unlike most other cultural institutions, the visitor is free to pick and choose, skip what does not interest him and concentrate on his personal preferences. This democratic anonymity of the museum has made it nevertheless particularly difficult to work out who the audience really is and to properly assess its needs and wishes.” Karsten Schubert, The Curator’s Egg, p75

“Like so many people of an intellectual cast, I am a specialist in relations rather than names. Think of the songbirds of the forest. With each other, as well as with other phenomena, they have rather simple relationships. Therefore one tends to ignore songbirds in favour of things that enter into more complex relationships. This is an example of the unfortunate tyranny of method over subject. It would be a healthy corrective to learn the names of the songbirds and also the names of a good selection of plants and insects.” J M Coetzee , Dusklands

“The museum is the colossal mirror in which man, finally contemplating himself from all sides, and finding himself literally an object of wonder, abandons himself to the ecstasy expressed in art journalism.” Georges Bataille, Museum