Glossary of the Art Institution
BIURO nr 19. Glossary of the Art Institution (1/2021)
Editor-in-Chief: Anna Mituś
Guest editor: Maryna Tomaszewska
Format: 11,5 cm x 20,5 cm
Number of pages: 177
Projekt graficzny: Renata Motyka
Publisher: BWA Galerie Sztuki Współczesnej
ISSN: 2081-2434
Yuriy Biley, Maciej Bujko, Maja Demska, Dominika Drozdowska, Marta Gendera, Marek Krajewski, Marika Kuźmicz, Berenika Nikodemska, Marcin Polak, Arkadiusz Półtorak, Bartosz Przybył-Ołowski, Dawid Radziszewski, Katarzyna Roj, Jan Sowa, Joanna Stembalska, Joanna Synowiec, Ewa Tatar, Aleksy Wójtowicz, Szymon Żydek
This issue of BIURO magazine, conceived within the framework of the Common Aspirations Office programme, was devoted to cultural institutions and was edited by Anna Mituś and Maryna Tomaszewska.
This time the periodical, published by BWA Wrocław Gallery of Contemporary Art, took the form of a glossary consisting of over 120 entries selected by a dozen or so people who had gotten on the train and traveled together, and then spent two days in Wrocław arguing about key concerns for the future of the cultural community.
The work on the publication began in the conference coach of the Polish National Railway. The journey was symbolic – it represented the forward movement and change necessary in thinking about cultural institutions, their purpose, accessibility, visibility and involvement in public matters, flexible forms and models of financing, acting and reacting to challenges that the cultural sector is facing: precarity, exclusion, crisis of authority, cultural education, and finally – the necessity to adopt a responsible position on the threat of global climate change and its catastrophic consequences. These were the topics discussed by the participants during the journey by train.
The glossary entries were the results of the discussion, which includes a catalogue of observations on the state of affairs, as well as suggestions for its change. It also features practical advice, guidelines, and points of reflection aimed at all those interested in organizing and running events connected with art.
From the introduction:
“We would like to reassure all those concerned about the form and content of this publication. It is (only and as much as) an attempt to define the situation and tasks of art institutions in Poland, formulated for the moment by a group of a dozen or so people who traveled together by train to then argue, for two consecutive days in Wroclaw, about issues crucial to the future of their own environment. The result of this work is more than one hundred and twenty phrases and their definitions. Some are left without comment as obvious (these entries are marked with an asterisk). Missing from the glossary are the terms art and artwork. These, in turn, were defined by more serious bodies and institutions. Therefore, we modestly state for the purposes of this introduction that art is what the institutions that are the subject of the presented publication deal with, and a work of art is an object (physical or otherwise) that is the realization of this art.”