The Portable Museum

1. The Portable Museum • What is a Portable Art Museum? • History and Influence • Marcel Duchamp • Fluxus • Inside the White Cube • The John Erickson Museum of Art • (JEMA) • Future Possibilities • Interview with Director of JEMA • Art Basel MIAMI Discussion

2. The Portable Museum What is a Portable Museum? designed to be moveable unfixed transitional spatial site specific challenging the traditional various physical forms

3. The Portable Museum History and Influence Marcel Duchamp Boite-en-valise Miniature exhibition in a portable box. 1935: Twenty boxes in a brown leather carrying case containing 69 small scale reproductions of his work. . 1950s-60s: Unfolding boxes containing standing frames, readymades hung in a vertical gallery, loose prints and one “original”. Undermines exclusivity and authenticity. Questions the “original” artwork, classification, presentation and the institution of the museum.

4. The Portable Museum History and Influence FLUXUS Avant-garde movement of the 1960’s Playful subversion of previous art traditions. George Maciunas Founding member of Fluxus. Fluxus boxes and Flux-Kits Small boxes containing art and objects. designed and assembled by artists such as Christo, Yoko Ono and George Brecht. George Brecht Games and Puzzles! Name Kit Multiple ready-made boxes resembling surrealism. Distributed by mail order.

5. The Portable Museum History and Influence Inside the White Cube The Ideology of Gallery Space By Brian O’Doherty The white cube convention for gallery design. Exhibit space is not a neutral container. It is an aesthetic object in and of itself. content within a context context itself the content The spatial arrangement over determines—consumes—the works to the degree that context becomes content. There is a need to reflect and restage this space. The Portable Museum has the possibility of destroying the white cube.

6. The Portable Museum JEMA A location variable museum. Created by the artist Sean Miller. In a 16 x 12 x 9 in aluminum case. Exhibited throughout America, Germany, Italy and Ireland. Exhibits last roughly 9hours and 15 min but may be held over by popular demand. JEMA isnot just a museum. Mission is to display and collect innovative and provocative contemporary art and offer exhibitions that allow people to think differently about the nature of art and art practice.

7. The Portable Museum JEMA Maintains all necessary museum functions: Staff Visitor response and mail room Archives and permanent collection All exhibition material available online Educational activities Music Performances

8. The Portable Museum JEMA YOKO ONO IMAGINE PEACE Including Wish Trees Visitors write wishes on paper adding them to the trees. Wishes will be send to the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland. Opening at Belfast, Ireland’s “Peace Wall” that divides the Nationalist and Loyalist communites in Belfast.

9. The Portable Museum JEMA Andrea Robbins and Max Becher Bavarian By Law is in Place Opening in Leavenworth, Washington during Mayfest

10. The Portable Museum JEMA Sergio Vega High Art Miami Art Basel

11. The Portable Museum JEMA New wings of galleries opened in SoHo NYC during the Art Parade 2007 4 exhibition galleries were carried exploring themes related to marching, walking, parading, exhibiting viewing and guarding art.

12. The Portable Museum JEMA JEMA disavows the site specific traditional methods of displaying visual art. Elitism of the museum questioned by allowing any passerby to partake in an artistic experience. Dematerializes the art institution and uses it as a tool. Challenges the viewer, the artist and the museum. Gives the artist an affordable, efficient avenue of artistic expression. Continuous movement allows intercommunication on a local and global scale. Revitalizing the role of the curator, the artist, the viewer. Breaks the white cube by purposefully encouraging the outside space to interact with the exhibition and art itself.

13. The Portable Museum Future Possibilities Interview with Sean Miller, Director of JEMA What sort of forms do you envision portable museums will take on in the future? “In the future, museums will become vastly more creative with the way they control and define space and I hope artists and audiences are able to ‘follow’ (both literally and metaphorically). There is still a universe of possibility here so much is possible and unexplored. I think also the professions of artist and curator are in a state of flux and I think in the future we will become more sophisticated in our understandings of the way(s) these two roles can be combined and redefined. George Marciunas in Fluxus, RirkritTrivanijia, Yoko Ono, Lygia Clark, and Hans Obrist are all people that show possibilites toward a more sophisticated view of authorship and the artist.”

14. The Portable Museum Future Possibilities The Future of the Museum: The Portable Museum Raphael Montañez Ortiz, Pedro Reyes, Peter Saville, KaterˇinaŠedá Destroying the white cube as a natural habitat for exhibiting art. Redefining the role of the curator and the artist. Museums in cell phones. The distributable, collaborative museum. The Art Museum as a new artistic genre. The Artist’s Museum.