In 2018, the inaugural Outset Partners Grants Programme awarded a one-of-a-kind Transformative Award - designed to afford the opportunity for one significant project to radically re-think the art institution of the future - to the Whitworth, the University of Manchester and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven for their initiative, The Constituent Museum: Collecting Relations and the Transformational Potential of Arte Util.
Using the methodology of Arte Util (‘art as a tool’ or ‘useful art’) developed by artist TANIA BRUGUERA over the last ten years, the two museums will radically transform their core protocols (which, as with most museums, are rooted in the 19th century) by redrawing relationships with local constituency groups, creating agency for them to inform the museums’ collecting, curating and presenting.
Both museums will create a new ‘constituency agency’, using existing staff and appointing a new part-time agency curator in both institutions. The agency will also be formed of local constituent groups in their home base and include other artists and social designers with whom they already collaborated as well as TANIA BRUGUERA. The curator will work as a mediator between the institution, the Arte Útil archive, and the constituents by convening meetings, workshops and public discussions with the selected artists and staff in the two museums and building up trust with the constituencies. The agency will be able to access all the resources of the museum including the collection, archives and embodied knowledge of museum workers. Each museum agency will work both locally and bilaterally, cross-referencing and exchanging information about their activities, creating better learning opportunities and shorter project cycles. The constituency agencies will create a feedback loop to the museum from the constituents and be the main activator of projects both in the museum and the community.
Charles Esche (Director of Van Abbemuseum ) and Alistair Hudson (Director of the Whitworth and Manchester Art Gallery) said:
"We are delighted to have this generous support from Outset. As an organisation dedicated to supporting public institutions with private means it has become a vital stimulus for creating and presenting contemporary art. Outset values art as a public good and positive contribution to society. Our museums are also committed to those goals and we will use the Transformative Award to experiment with ways to repurpose the museum as a new social power plant to collectively generate ways of navigating the huge economic and political transition ahead."
