Ausstellungen. Generali Foundation. Exhibitions 1989–2008

Can a corporate exhibition house and museum, which is operated as a sponsoring instrument and financed with funds from the private sector, play a special role and what tasks can it take on? For almost twenty years, the Generali Foundation, founded in Vienna, has made an indispensable contribution to the production and reception of critical art with a program that is both concentrated and consistent. Exhibitions based on research and discourse have also laid the foundations for the Generali Foundation’s collection, which is now regarded as one of the best collections of conceptual, cross-media and critically oriented art from the 1960s to the present day.

This publication traces the Generali Foundation’s program under the direction of Sabine Breitwieser—from the first exhibitions with commissioned works in a multifunctional office and exhibition space to the large thematic exhibitions and retrospective solo presentations in the exhibition building, which opened in 1995. The Generali Foundation has established itself as a highly respected international institution with its scholarly examination of artists from the 1960s and 1970s and much-discussed exhibitions on current topics.

Artists including VALIE EXPORT, Harun Farocki, Dan Graham, Sanja Iveković, Mary Kelly, Edward Krasiński, Gordon Matta-Clark, Gustav Metzger, Walter Pichler, Martha Rosler, Adrian Piper, and Allan Sekula have all presented their work at the Generali Foundation—many of them for the very first time in such a comprehensive form. Commissioned works by artists such as Maria Eichhorn, Andrea Fraser, Hans Haacke, Dorit Margreiter, Mathias Poledna, Marjetica Potrč, and Heimo Zobernig have been produced by the Generali Foundation. Major exhibitions that have had an important impact include Things we don’t understand, one of the Foundation’s guest-curated projects, and also White Cube/Black Box, RE-PLAY on the beginnings of international media art, and vivências with conceptual art from Latin America.

Based on numerous exhibition views and texts, this book offers an overview of the comprehensive program while still going into detail. Sabine Breitwieser, long-time director of the Generali Foundation, and art historian and critic Sabeth Buchmann reflect on the context and genesis in an interview. Similar to the collection catalogue, which was published in 2003, this publication also documents a status quo—a chronology of the “collection” of exhibitions, events and publications and thus also of all the artists, critics and scholars who were involved in the program in one way or another.