Art Handling

A handbook for museums
The term „art handling“ describes aspects of the (professional) art
scene that often remain invisible: installation and de-installation,
technical and conservation-related documentation, storage, transport,
and legal issues. Discussions around materiality reveal that
infrastructure and logistics are of constitutive significance to the
production and presentation of artworks. Over the course of the
professionalization of the global art scene, the requirements relating to
installation-based, ephemeral, and performative artworks, and how
these are handled by the institutions, have continually become stricter,
and issues of documentation have accordingly become more complex. On
the one hand, new work concepts or works are changing the
requirements for the „infrastructure“ of museums. On the other hand,
such „infrastructures“ that now exist in many places are also directly
stimulating the emergence of certain art forms.
With contributions by Monika Domman, Peter Schneemann, Tobias Vogt,
Beat Wyss, and others. The reader „Art Handling“ was initiated as a
result of the symposium of the same name held at the Migros Museum
für Gegenwartskunst in 2014, and covers central aspects of this topic
in essays and in a round-table discussion.
Published with Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, and
Hochschule Luzern – Design & Kunst, Lucerne.