The Museum of the Commons (MoC)
Short description
The Museum of the Commons (MoC) is a new project by L'lnternationale, developed to help museums and other arts organisations adapt and change in order to better address issues such as climate, sustainability and social justice. It is a 4 year programme developed by the European confederation of contemporary art museums L'lnternationale with HDK-Valand as a key partner and host for the managing editor of L’Internationale Online as well as a research collaborator. The MoC encourages contemporary museums and cultural organisations to act as open source tools for new sustainable forms of cultural co-creation, contributing to environmental, social and artistic transformation.
For over two centuries, museums have been the custodians of heritage and memory. However, in recent decades, they have become key spaces of the public sphere in which major challenges are addressed and discussed, such as climate change, social inclusion and equality. Understanding the cultural sector as an ecosystem formed by organisations of different scales, impacts and target audiences, the MoC establishes sustainable cooperation between 7 museums, 3 academic institutions, 4 art organisations, and 2 associated partners, performing specific roles in the art sector across the whole European continent (N, E, S and W). Thus, the MoC contributes to making the arts ecosystem broader, healthier and more inclusive. MoC grows out of the project OME (2018-2022) consisting of 7 musuems and 2 academic partners (whereof HDK-Valand was one) focusing on Europe through the 1990's and devoted to developing the constituent museum.
The MoC project is organised in 3 thematic threads:
1. Climate: tackling the questions of environmental sustainability;
2. Situated organisations: questioning the role of art institutions as spaces of inclusion and diversity; and
3. The past in the present: addressing history and heritage as tools for social justice.
The MoC reaches 2 million European citizens by producing 6 exhibitions, 4 artistic assemblies, 5 residency programmes, 6 nomadic schools, 50 workshops, 5 community garden projects, 1 online platform, 3 digital archives and 41 digital publications.
The MoC is committed with the Ukrainian population suffering due to the conflict and the exodus caused by the Russian military invasion. The MoC includes as partner the Visual Culture Research Centre (UKR), an organisation. The MoC will contribute to the future recovery of the Ukrainian cultural sector by organising two editions of the Kyiv Biennial (2023 and 2025).
The MoC contract with the EU for the project was signed in February 2023, and then we begin a communications campaign across the network to promote awareness. L’Intenationale – the museum group members (L’I) – maintain a shared visibility group where the communications officers for the museums work together to plan visibility and communications for the network and for the MoC project.
Members
Prof. Mick Wilson
Nick Aikens
Tove Posselt
Prof. Elena Raviola
Dr. Cathryn Klasto
Cooperation partners
Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej W Warszawie (MSN, Warsaw, Poland)
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (MNCARS, Madrid, Spain)
Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA, Barcelona, Spain)
Van Abbemuseum (VAM, Eindhoven, Netherlands)
Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (M HKA, Antwerp, Belgium)
Muzej Suvremene Umjetnosti (MSU, Zagreb, Croatia)
National College of Art & Design (NCAD, Dublin, Ireland)
Research Centre, Slovenian Academy of Arts and Sciences (ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW, Berlin, Germany)
Institute of Radical Imagination (IRI, Naples, Italy)
Visual Culture Research Centre (VCRC, Kyiv, Ukraine)
Associated partners
Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA, Dublin, Ireland)
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.