Project leader: VAM – Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (NL)
Coorganisers: Moderna galerija, Ljubljana (SI), Garanti Kültür A.S. (TR), Grizedale Arts (UK), Liverpool John Moores University (UK), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona – MACBA (ES), Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen – M HKA (BE), Museo nacional centro de arte Reina Sofía – MNCARS, Madrid (ES), Stiftung Universität Hildesheim (DE), University College Ghent School of Arts – KASK, (BE)

In the 5-year project the UoA, the consortium L’Internationale, drawing from previous experience in EU-collaboration, will publicly develop a new European model for content-driven, sustainable collaboration in the museum field. It does this through a rich program of 20 exhibitions, 10 publications, 8 symposia, 4 new commissioned art projects, a vibrant online platform, an innovative education program, concentrated professional exchange and more. Through UoA we create new, sustainable ways of professional collaboration, allow concentrated and long-term collection exchange (digital and physical) and will foster an intercultural dialogue for 2.000.000 Europeans, who are asked to use art to shape their European citizenship.

Museums are the civic institutions where fine art is used for public benefit: They mediate art and history to a public via an organisation. Recently on the organisational level, the EU has funded successful initiatives like NEMO. The UoA however seeks to develop a model for all three levels through a long-term mid-size collaboration that departs from a shared vision on art and society.

The central narrative of UoA links art and its public by rereading the period around 1989 to today as a chapter in a longer European history of civil society that started with the revolutions of 1848. The project analyses the ‘useful’, even necessary role art plays in the functioning of civil democracies.

The consortium has 10 partners connecting East and West, North and South. At the centre are 6 public art museums, joined by a group of universities, smaller art platforms and publishing organisations.

The project sits within the ambitions of the Culture Program 2007-2013, but also aligns with several key-issues addressed in the coming Creative Europe program (transnational collaboration, inclusive growth of public, and new forms of access online and offline). It also is in line with European 2020 agenda – inclusion and the balanced sharing of knowledge.
(Source: EAC.)

Project activities:
The Heritage of 1989. Case Study: The Second Yugoslav Documents Exhibition