THE CURATORIAL COURSE WHAT COULD/SHOULD CURATING DO? IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE A PUBLIC TALK BY:
ELENA FILIPOVIC
Marcel Duchamp, the most influential curator of the 20th century?
MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART BELGRADE
MONDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2018 AT 6 PM
In collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade, the lecture within the series of public programs organized by WCSCD will be presented by Elena Filipovic — the director and curator of Kunsthalle Basel. The series is designed to offer new and different perspectives on the theories and practices of exhibition-making.
The lecture by Elena Filipovic, entitled Marcel Duchamp, the most influential curator of the 20th century?, will evolve around the history of art as a discipline that has been constructed through the analysis of individual artists and their objects and images. Monet’s Water Lilies, Picasso’s Demoiselles, Giacometti’s Walking Man… And it is no different for Marcel Duchamp, who is largely celebrated for the objects he produced—whether a store-bought urinal named Fountain or a cryptic, erotic-mechanical diagram known as the Large Glass. But what if the impact of the most influential artist of the 20th century lay elsewhere? This lecture asks you to take seriously Duchamp’s activities not normally seen as artistic—from his art dealing, administrating, and reproducing to his publicizing and exhibition-making. Across a variety of projects spanning from 1913 to 1969, we will see that Duchamp’s “non-art” labor, and in particular what could be seen as his curatorial strategies, were both central to his conception of the work of art and deeply influential to generations of artists after him who learned from him that the frame around the artwork might actually make the artwork as such.
ABOUT THE LECTURER:
Elena Filipovic has lead Kunsthalle Basel as its director and curator since November 2014. She previously served as senior curator of WIELS from 2009-2014, and co-curator of the 5th Berlin Biennial in 2008 with Adam Szymczyk as well as editor or co-editor of a number of anthologies on global exhibition histories, including The Artist as Curator: An Anthology (Mousse Publications, 2017), The Biennial Reader: Anthology on Large-Scale Perennial Exhibitions of Contemporary Art (Hatje Cantz, 2010), and The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe (MIT Press, 2005). She has curated numerous solo exhibitions of emerging artists in addition to organizing several traveling retrospectives. She is author, most recently, of The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp (MIT Press, 2016) and David Hammons, Bliz-aard Ball Sale (Afterall Books, 2017).
The WCSCD curatorial course and series of public lectures are initiated and organized by Biljana Ciric together with Supervizuelna. The lecture by Elena Filipovic is made possible with the help of MoCAB and Pro Helvetia – Swiss Art Council, with the additional support of Zepter Hotel and Car:Go.
Project patron: Wiener Städtische; project partners: The Museum of Contemporary Art Belgrade; GRAD—European Center for Culture and Debate; EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial, ’Novi Sad 2021 – European Capital of Culture’ Foundation and Zepter Museum.
The project is supported by: the Goethe Institute in Belgrade; Istituto Italiano di Cultura Belgrado; the Embassy of Sweden; the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands; the Embassy of Ireland in Greece; the Embassy of Indonesia; the EU Info Centre; Mondriaan Fund, the public cultural funding organization focusing on visual arts and cultural heritage; Pro Helvetia – Swiss Art Council; and galleries Eugster || Belgrade, HESTIA Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau, Center for the Promotion of Science and Zepter Hotel, Royal Inn Hotel and CAR:GO. Media partners: EUNIC Serbia, RTS3.
Cover photo by Ivan Zupanc