There are a number of different crises, in various guises, in today's world. The most prominent of these is the global economic crisis, but this is not felt as keenly across the globe: there are also countries of economic prosperity. There is also, however, the museum crisis: the predominant model of the museum is collapsing. Again, this crisis is not constant everywhere--there are spaces that didn't have museums until recently and are now suddenly experiencing a museum boom, or else are still without museums but have initiatives that are taking care of heritage beyond the traditional model of the museum. Such crises mean that the old paradigm is being replaced by a new one that still needs to be defined. This book investigates what such a new paradigm may entail and its consequences for the preservation of heritage.
About the Author: Bartomeu Mari has worked as Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona (MACBA) since 2008. He previously served as the Curator of Exhibitions at the Fondation pour l'Architecture in Brussels, Belgium, between 1989 and 1993, and as the Curator at IVAM-Centre Julio Gonzalez in Valencia from 1994 to 1996. He has also spent time as Director of Witte de With, the Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, between 1996 and 2002, and as Director of the Centro Internacional de Cultura Contemporanea in Donostia-San Sebastian, Basque Country, from 2002 to 2004. Bartomeu Mari has served as secretary-treasurer of CIMAM since 2011, and has curated exhibitions by artists such as Raoul Hausmann, Lawrence Weiner, Rita McBride, Eulalia Valldosera, Francis Picabia, Frederik Kiesler, Marcel Broodthaers, Joan Jonas and Francis Al s, among many others. He has written numerous prefaces and articles about contemporary art, and is currently working on a volume of essays about this subject. Zdenka Badovinac is a curator and writer, and has served as Director of the Moderna galerija in Ljubljana since 1993. In her work, Badovinac highlights the difficult processes of redefining history alongside different avant-garde traditions within contemporary art. Badovinac's first exhibition to address these issues was Body and the East-From the 1960s to the Present (1998). She also initiated the first Eastern European art collection, Arteast 2000+, which has been permanently exhibited in the new Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova since 2011. Badovinac was Slovenian Commissioner at the Venice Biennale from 1993 to 1997 and 2005 and Austrian Commissioner at the Sao Paulo Biennial in 2002, and the President of CIMAM between 2010 and 2013.