Museum as Hub Presents Simultaneous International Programming

"Museum as Hub: The Accords" is a multipart project exploring new forms of curatorial practice and international collaboration. Building on experimentation, critique, and play, the exhibition proposes new terms for agreement and considers whether an "accord" can inspire new methods of communication and production, and perhaps lead to new approaches to exhibition making in the process.

"The Accords" aims to address both the challenges and possibilities of working as a "hub," moving beyond ideas of consensus and shared authorship toward a more flexible platform that supports multiple and simultaneous strands of research, exchange, and presentation.

Two exhibitions conceptually linked in their development will be presented on the fifth floor of the New Museum in addition to simultaneous manifestations initiated by Museum as Hub partners in Cairo, Eindhoven, Mexico City, and Seoul. From February to September 2011, Hub partner institutions present performances in one city that stream to audiences in another; publish texts and post them online; share screenings between institutions; and organize exhibitions that further expand the discussion-exploring new directions in Museum as Hub activity.

Wael Shawky, Telematch Sadat (still), 2007. Video. TRT: 14 min. Courtesy the artist.The Accords: Part I
"Museum as Hub: An accord is first and foremost only a proposition" February 9-May 1, 2011
The project begins with the exhibition "An accord is first and foremost only a proposition."
Proceeding from the idea that an accord functions as a kind of premise, the exhibition explores how coming together around a set of principles can give form to particular ideas, actions, and events that extend beyond an official agreement. Through the work of Yael Bartana, Dora Garcia, Wael Shawky, and Carey Young, the exhibition addresses the form and logic of agreement and references fictional or historic examples to propose a space for speculation, contestation, and response.

Carey Young presents contracts and statements that utilize legal language to press upon
conventional relationships between artist, audience, and institution. Based on previous works
exploring surveillance and trust, Dora Garcia's New Forever (2011) is a work that begins as an
agreement with the New Museum that allows her to install a web camera in the gallery and stream activity in the space twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the period of one year. Wael Shawky creates new work that builds upon his Telematch Sadat (2007), a video in which the artist worked with children to enact a version of Anwar El Sadat's 1981 assassination and burial following his unpopular signing of the Camp David Accords and the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty. Yael Bartana considers strategies of images and their making in her presentation of two posters, a coloring book, and other works inspired by her video trilogy, in which the artist imagines a Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland. The exhibition is guest curated by Sarah Rifky, Townhouse Gallery, Cairo.

On February 10, the New Museum will screen selections from Wael Shawky's Telematch series
(2007-09), followed by a discussion with the artist. The project references a German television
program of the same name that was popularized in Egypt and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s. An early
telecast game show, it brought together people from two villages who were dressed in medieval
costuming, and organized competitions between the two groups. The screening includes Shawky's
Telematch Sadat (2007).

The Accords: Part II
"Museum as Hub: The Incongruous Image-Marcel Broodthaers and Liliana Porter"
May 11-July 3, 2011
The second part of "The Accords" is part elaboration, part critique, and part response to the
exhibition "An accord is first and foremost only a proposition." During the development of the project and related manifestations, Hub partner curators began discussing a response to this exhibition. The resulting project, "Museum as Hub: The Incongruous Image" places works by Marcel Broodthaers (b. 1924, Brussels, d.1976, Cologne) and Liliana Porter (b. Buenos Aries, 1941) in dialogue.

Highlighting several points of common interest, or philosophical accords, that exist between these
two artists, "The Incongruous Image" explores ways in which humor, riddle, and self-critique play
fundamental roles in the oeuvres of both Broodthaers and Porter.
Marcel Broodthaers famously described his genesis as an artist with the statement, "Finally the
idea of inventing something insincere crossed my mind and I set to work straightaway," while
Liliana Porter has posited that, "The only consciousness possible is doubt." Positioning its inquiry
between these spaces of insincerity and doubt, "The Incongruous Image" seeks to draw out, through juxtaposition, how each artist investigates the deceptions, dissonances, and incongruities that images and language can produce. The exhibition features Broodthaers's slide-projection work
Ombres Chinoise (1973/74) and other works from the Van Abbemuseum's collection, juxtaposed with paintings and prints by Porter, including examples from her photograveur set "The Magritte Series"

(1975-77). The project takes the artworks as departure points for various conversations about the
politics of knowledge to address questions of taxonomy, pedagogy, and display. "The Incongruous
Image" is organized by guest curators Annie Fletcher, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; and Tobias
Ostrander, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City.

About the Museum as Hub
The Museum as Hub is a partnership of six international arts organizations that supports art activities and experimentation; explores artistic, curatorial, and institutional practice; and serves as an important resource for the public to learn about contemporary art from around the world. Initiated by the New Museum in 2006, this partnership includes art space pool, Seoul, South Korea; Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City, Mexico; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Museum as Hub at the New Museum is organized by Eungie Joo, Keith Haring Director and Curator of Educations and Public Programs.

Exhibition Support
Museum as Hub is made possible by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New
York State Council on the Arts. Endowment support is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund,
the Skadden, Arps Education Programs Fund, and the William Randolph Hearst Endowed Fund for
Education Programs at the New Museum.

About the New Museum
The New Museum is the only museum in New York City exclusively devoted to contemporary art.
Founded in 1977, the New Museum was conceived as a center for exhibitions, information, and
documentation about living artists from around the world. From its beginnings as a one-room office on Hudson Street to the inauguration of its first freestanding, dedicated building on the Bowery designed by SANAA in 2007, the New Museum continues to be a hub of new art and new ideas and is a place of ongoing experimentation about what art and arts institutions can be in the twenty-first
century