LOOKING BACK/ARTS Potential of arts
Lithuania; Memento Park, Budapest; etc.), and only a few museums have decided to show it as an ephemeral part of the story. Non-official art and the avant-garde circles have ascended, winning the most important rooms of the permanent exhibitions in modern art museums from Warsaw to Ljubljana. In effect, they have hidden away giant storage rooms packed with the official and semi-modernist [“soc-modern” i.e. socialist realism] art of the 60s-70s. This is the solid base of the old tectonic plate sliding under the new one, and on top of it you can find the new Contemporary Institutions. This type of Western art infrastructure – appearing like a research lab – was absolutely unknown before the 90s, and became an important key figure of the system because of the Soros Foundation, which created a network of national foundations in Eastern and Central Europe in the 90s. Different Contemporary Art Centers have been founded from Tallinn to Bucharest with the same aim: creating a new, democratic, and neo-liberal cultural elite through the Open Society Institute. The political mission of the Soros Foundation was accompanied by the support of neo- or postconceptualist tendencies at Contemporary Art Centers. It has become an isolated and imported art base connected to the high mainstream of the global art scene and poststructuralist academic sphere (Gender Studies, Postcolonial Studies, etc.) but disconnected from local heritage. These institutions have played an important role in catapulting conceptual artists, new media artists, and socially engaged artists from
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post-socialist reality into the show rooms of the best international biennials. When various centers completed their missions, many were closed or transformed. Ultimately, George Soros and his neo-liberal economic theories are no longer welcome in art circles which are turning more and more anti-capitalist. In the meantime, the global art scene has grown into a giant industry with great biennials and art fairs like the international world fairs of the 19th century, but dedicated only to contemporary and/or fine art. Huge national and private art institutes are growing in the Western World, and are enjoying the unique boom of the AngloSaxon and Asian art markets, as well as the support of private collectors and art dealers. Brand new private contemporary museums in Moscow, Kiev or The Emirates are following this global nouveau-rich tendency, but in Central Europe, only the (local) governments have opened new facilities (e.g. KUMU, Tallinn; MOCAK, Krakow; MODEM, Debrecen; etc.) to generate tourism. Meanwhile, private institutes remain rare: for example, the Kogart House, Budapest, or the Marton Museum, Zagreb. While these cultural investments are focused on reaching international visibility, they are in fact weak echoes of the famous Bilbao Effect in the dreams of the mayors. Currently, we are standing at a crossroads: behind us is an old and oversized, but fractured, museum network not able to sustain itself. Beside us are entertaining blockbuster exhibitors and new museums facing the financial crisis, while in front of
us are the non-national private museums with fine oligarchs to show goods bought from Basel and London (Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev; Garage, Moscow; etc.). As I see it, the latest version does not fit into the Central European intellectual climate as old museum networks are permanently disappearing without new resources and new issues. New museum models have not been able to build a strong international professional standing and have been more like useful elements in city marketing. My personal prediction is that smaller places will identify with the Central European contemporary art scene in the near future, such as independent artist-run spaces and little moveable art galleries (Gregor Podnar, Ljubljana; Plan B, Cluj; etc.), but of course, only if they receive international attention. Modern and contemporary museums in the region – without world-known stars – will not be able to compete with the Western and Eastern museums showing the most expensive artworks from around the globe as long as we see the heyday of the biennials and the art fairs. They will not be a part of the international game, only the local entertainer of the tourists and citizenry (and the minority of the museum theorists) wrestling with the complicated and impractical layers: unsustainable socialist networks and miniature Bilbao remakes. It is the dismal part of the paradigm shift. The author is a Hungarian art historian and editorin-chief of Flash Art Hungary.
VIsegrad insight 2|2012