Markus Ambach - MUSEUCAMPUS

In museucampus, Markus Ambach explores some of the key themes of his work, namely the reinterpretation of places and the appropriation of public spaces. At the same time, he proposes a critical reading of the contextual specificity of MNAC – Museu do Chiado. As a result, his project develops between a general reflection on the instances of artistic production and recognition and an attentive look at the relationship between the museum and its immediate surroundings, with special focus on the museum’s connection with the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Since its foundation in 1911, the museum and the faculty have occupied adjacent areas in the old convent of São Francisco da Cidade, where the National Academy of Fine Arts is also located. Despite the obvious affinities between them, cohabitation was never easy and although at an early stage the two institutions were close, both in terms of their location and their programming, from the 1940s onwards MNAC sought to assert its autonomy from the academic sphere. The opening of an independent entrance leading to Rua Serpa Pinto symbolically marked the separation between the museum and the school, creating a distance which, in 1994, would be reinforced by the intervention of the architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte. It was not until 2010 that the passage between the museum garden and the faculty was opened again.

Aware of the fragility and ambiguity of this relationship, Markus Ambach explores the existing tensions between the two institutions, questioning behaviors and (pre)conceptions. He takes on the role of mediator between the two contexts in an attempt to establish different paths of communication. As a record of this process of mediation, the exhibition held at the multipurpose room of the museum presents a series of objects found in the classrooms of the faculty or voluntarily loaned by the students. These objects are recontextualized by an ambivalent and open museological discourse in an installation that also works as a passageway by extending beyond the exhibition space along a "walk between Rua Serpa Pinto and Largo da Academia de Belas Artes".

Helena Barranha

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museucampus a walk between production and representation

The exhibition focuses on the today nearly invisible neighbourhood of the two institutions MNAC - Museu do Chiado and the Faculdade de Belas Artes. Both based in the centre of Lisbon back to back in the same block, their continuous spatial neighbourhood changed intensely in determination and means over the years, also marking important changes in the productive, political and social means of art. These changing relations are embodied in a small door which used to connect the two spheres, not only physically but also metaphysically, allowing political and social influences to permeate between the realms of production and representation.

The door, closed in 1944 and only reopened in 2010, incorporates the juxtaposition between the place of production of art and its defining, value-enhancing and accumulating social institutions. The reopening of the door not only established a new pathway from the settled, honourable museum’s sculpture garden to the vibrant campus of the students, but also created a shortcut between ideology and strategy, representation and production, accumulation and practice, history and future, allowing them to enter into a discourse of their relations.

The Walk

While the reopened door offers a new spatial opportunity, the exchange between both spheres is still not fully established. The project refers to this situation in both actual and historical terms. A “guided tour” delineates a walk through both institutions and leads the visitor along a marked path from the museum’s sculpture garden through the reopened door, directly into the vibrant centre of art production in the faculty. The project articulates the hidden neighbourhood and its interactions, and helps to establish new discourses and relations between the faculty and the museum, also hoping to initiate a new use of both territories and spaces.

The Project Room

In the project room the visitors find an installation which assembles exhibits of all kinds in the middle of the space. These exhibits are presented in the classic language of a museum: glass-cases and plinths display artefacts, sculptures and cultural items. All exhibits are taken from the faculty: works by students, leftovers in workshops and other things are revaluated by the language and place of the museum to become artefacts and cultural goods. The walls surrounding the scene show an archive of photographs of more or less inconsiderable things and practices noticed along the walk: haphazardly stored trash, accidental material agglomerations, purposeless writings, forgotten plants and materials, sculptures and cleaning environments photographed at both the museum and faculty. Through their representation, the objects loose their original sense, associated to the daily practice of unconscious activities, and suggest a new approach to art.

Markus Ambach

Markus Ambach
MUSEUCAMPUS
"A walk from Rua Serpa Pinto to the Largo da Academia de Belas-Artes"
Sculpture garden and gateway to the Faculty of Fine Arts
Kuratorin: Helena Barranha