Publication

FRASER, Marie (2016). “Museum Collections, Between History and Contemporaneity. Mona Hatoum at the Querini Stampala Fondation”, BAWIN, Julie, François, MAIRESSE (ed.). Culture et Musées, n° 27.

Taking as reference Mona Hatoum’s Interior Landscape presented at the Querini Stampalia Foundation in 2009, concurrently with the 53rd Venice Biennial, this article analyses the practice, by contemporary artists, of the reactualization of historical collections. Several aspects are looked at, from a museological point of view (confrontation, intrusion through mimesis or camouflage, disruption of norms of presentation in view of a more complex experience for the visitor) and also from a temporal point of view (anachronism, temporal juxtaposition, a revision of the historicist model in favor of an approach more engaged with the present). Reactualization is defined here as a double strategy. First of all, in response to an event imperative, it is a museum strategy aiming to revitalize historical collections by rendering them more appealing through a shift in the model of stability and permanence. Secondly, the practice of reactualization is a critical strategy that calls for a new awareness on the part of the museum with respect to its collection and partakes in larger reflection on the concept of History. This second aspect of the strategy incites museums to rethink their own relation to History and the historicity of their collections.