Proudly Presenting: Generali Foundation Collection

The exhibition Proudly Presenting: Generali Foundation Collection introduced, for the first time, a selection from the internationally renowned collection in its new location at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg. The first exclusive presentation of works from the Generali Foundation Collection highlighted the most important characteristic qualities of this prominent and internationally renowned collection. 2100 works by 130 artists in the Generali Foundation’s holdings were entrusted as a permanent loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg earlier in 2014.

A central theme-based group of works comprised objects in which art, design, and architecture merge to shape but also articulate a critique of utopian ideas. Bruno Gironcoli’s phallic sculptures, Dan Graham’s glass pavilions, Hans Hollein’s Mobile Office (1969), Gordon Matta-Clark’s interventions in abandoned buildings, and Walter Pichler’s TV-Helmet (1967) have meanwhile become icons of this subject. The high expectations in new technologies and media since the 1960s have also flowed into numerous works that examine their effects on people. The “feminist-actionist-” and “expanded-cinema”-works by VALIE EXPORT, especially her TAPP- und TASTKINO (Tap and Touch Cinema, 1968) and Harun Farocki’s video installations tackled some of these issues in profound groups of works. Works by the younger generation of artists have also contributed to a discussion of this topic from a current perspective. Several works in the collection engage in “photography against the grain” (to quote the artist and writer Allan Sekula) in conjunction with a media critique, such as Sanja Iveković’s photo collages, Martha Rosler’s photo-text-installation about the Bowery in New York, and Sekula’s cinematic photo essays.

Years ago, headlines proclaimed the Generali Foundation an “Institution for Institutional Critique.” The collection does in fact comprise numerous artists whose works focus on the conditions of art, and ask what we want from art. Early on in his Condensation Cube (1965) Hans Haacke made visible how visitors have an impact on an artwork. Adrian Piper negotiates hegemonies and stereotypes in the art world, and Andrea Fraser humorously introduces us to the real life going on in a museum during performances as “museum tours”.

With this exhibition, the Museum der Moderne Salzburg wrote the pre-text to a new, rotating collection exhibition organized on level 2 at the Mönchsberg building, in which works from the Generali Foundation collection enter into dialogue with other, extensive holdings from the museum.