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Longitudes cuts across Latitudes’ projects and research with news, updates, and reportage.

Cover Story—November 2019: ‘Fighting fires in Valencia: the 30-year story of the IVAM’

Latitudes' homepage www.lttds.org

The November 2019 monthly Cover Story ‘Fighting fires in Valencia: the 30-year story of the IVAM’ on Latitudes' homepage: www.lttds.org
 

"How does a museum recover from scandal? What imperatives exist for regional institutions outside of capitals? When, in 1989, the IVAM (Institut Valencià d’Art Modern) opened the doors to its imposing, new, slab-like building on the edge of what was once Valencia’s medieval walled core, it became the first public museum in Spain dedicated to collecting and exhibiting 20th-century art. Discussing IVAM’s rise, fall and reinvention, an article in the current frieze (issue 207, November–December) by Latitudes' Max Andrews (also a frieze Contributing Editor) is a case study on how right-wing politics impacted an entire city art ecology."


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Cover Stories' are published on a monthly basis on Latitudes' homepage featuring past, present or forthcoming projects, research, texts, artworks, exhibitions, films, objects or field trips related to our curatorial activities.

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Artist-run art schools – which educational models might work in Spain?

A few days ago Rachel Spence of the Financial Times published an interesting article on "Artist-run art schools". It features a range of initiatives that are being developed with different profiles and results: from Ryan Gander's Fairfield International, a residency for artists set to open in 2015 (with business partner, creative consultant Simon Turnbull), to Wael Shawky's MASS in Alexandria or Marina Abramovic's eponymous institute with a focus on 'long durational work' (and her ego?) in upstate New York for which she has already raised more than $660,000 through a crowdfunding campaign. 

Rendering of the Fairfield International art school to open in a former Victorian primary school building in Suffolk. Photo: Fizzy Dawson Mayer.

In the article, Spence makes an interesting point about the differences between the Gander and the Shawky approach: a key element of Shawky’s Independent Art Studio & Study Programme are the trips abroad "as the contemporary art scene is still limited in Egypt". Last year its participants worked as interns at the Sharjah Biennial and visited Documenta 13 in Germany, initiatives that helped them think “about the concept of the work rather than how they craft it. The discussions they have when they come back about what they have seen are really important", as Shawky explained.

At Gander's Fairfield International – read more about his plans in this Artforum '500 words' feature – there will be a sense of it being a retreat and its by the seaside, away from "all the art world distractions that don’t help an artist work". As Gander explains, “the two most valuable elements for artists are time and space with no need to earn money”. Here residents will be chosen according to both artistic excellence and financial needs, becoming "something between an art academy and a residency, entirely free to the [12] students who are also provided with a living stipend."

The article also highlights the common reasons for starting such projects: the failure of the public sector to provide a service [artistic education] and, secondly their sense that "artists who have enjoyed certain opportunities, have a duty to fill the gap". 

This makes us think about which artistic-led educational model could be more applicable in a Spanish context – Shawky's "outwards" or Gander's "inwards"? A mixture of both? And in particular, which financial models could make it happen in a context with little philanthropic tradition or the luxury of a "sense of duty" to fill the very same gap Gander and Shawky talked about? Perhaps what we are really missing the most is an internal debate within the artistic community about if such models are desirable and if so, how can they be taken forward. 

In summer 2011, we initiated Campus at the Espai Cultural Caja Madrid in Barcelona as a tuition-free, unaccredited, pilot art school. Four one-week working sessions were held during consecutive weeks, each under the guidance of international artists. This was a one-off temporary project (the Espai closed later in December 2012) which in part aimed to provoke such a debate in the context of the diminishing arts infrastructure of Barcelona and the upsurge in artists leaving the city to pursue careers abroad.

Work space during week 1. Photo: Latitudes

Having visited Glasgow and Dublin in recent months, two cities more-or-less comparable in size to Barcelona, and visited a wealth of artists, impressively well-equipped studio facilities, and numerous artist-run-spaces, one can clearly trace back the importance of generating a robust artistic community from a strong basis of residency-based models and art schools [Glasgow School of Art's Master in Fine Art being a particularly key example of this]. These feed directly back into the artistic capacity and ambition of the type of work being produced, as well as creating exchange, an influx of new blood, aweness of the work of international peers, and generating curatorial discourse.

Related reading on artist-run / self-organised art schools initiatives: 

– In 2012, frieze featured 'New Schools' profiling artist-run art academies and education programmes The Silent University, The School of Global Art, The External Program, MASS Alexandria, SOMA in Mexico City and Islington Mill Art Academy.

– 2010 frieze also featured Piero Golia and Eric Wesley's The Mountain School of Art in Los Angeles. 

– Most recently, David Batty of The Guardian [@David_Batty] wrote 'Alternative art schools: a threat to universities?' profiling the tuition-free OpenSchoolEast, which began last September in London, backed by c. £110,000 from the Barbican and Create London. In return for a year's free tuition and studio space, their 12 participants give one day a month of their time to community activities in the borough.

 
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Presentation of the venues for Manifesta 8 (2010) in Murcia and Cartagena and announcement of Manifesta 9 (2012)

Presentation during ARCO by Pedro Alberto Cruz, Regional Minister of Culture and Tourism of the Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia, HEDWIG FIJEN, Director, INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION MANIFESTA and representatives of the CURATORIAL TEAM of Manifesta 8: BASSAM EL BARONI- ALEXANDRIA CONTEMPORARY ARTS FORUM (Egypt), KHALED RAMADAN - CHAMBER OF PUBLIC SECRETS (Denmark, UK, Lebanon) and VIT HAVRANEK- TRANZIT.ORG (Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia). Photo: Latitudes


Following on the announcement of Murcia as the host city for Manifesta 8 (see here) and the curatorial appointments announcement (see here), Manifesta Foundation presented during ARCO the venues for the European biennial, which will include (selection of photographs below): Museo Hidráulico de los Molinos del Río Segura, the MUBAM (Museo de Bellas Artes, Murcia), the Espacio AV, the Centro Párraga, Murcia, and the MURAM (Museo Regional del Arte Moderno, Cartagena), the Parque Torres Auditorium (Cartagena), the ARQUA (Museo Nacional de Arqueología Subacuática, Cartagena), the Former Autopsies Pavilion (Cartagena) and the San Antón Prison (Cartagena).

Slideshow with map of the venues in Murcia and Cartagena. Photos: Latitudes

ARQUA (Museo Nacional de Arqueología Subacuática), Cartagena. 

Former Autopsies Pavilion (Cartagena). 

MURAM (Museo Regional del Arte Moderno), Cartagena.
 
In addition, emblematic spaces like the Pavilion 2 of the Artillery Barracks (Murcia), the Former Post and Telegraphs Office (Murcia) or the panoramic restaurant El Parque (Cartagena) are being recovered for the public and re-opened after years in disuse.

Former Post and Telegraphs Office (Murcia). 

Manifesta 8 will take place from October 2, 2010 through January 9, 2011.


The hosting city/region for Manifesta 9 (2012) has recently been announced: Limburg, the eastern most province of Flanders, Belgium. The organising venue is the art center Z33 directed by Jan Boelen. In words of the commissioner 'repositioning oneself in a post-industrial society and the pursuit of attaching new meaning to our industrial heritage are issues which are present all over Europe and hold the interest of the Manifesta. With its impressive buildings on the mine sites at Waterschei and Beringen, and the production halls of the former Philips factory in Hasselt Limburg has also favourable sites to house expositions.'



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