Souffleur, what is the meaning of 'Collection presentation'?
© M Leuven, foto: Dirk Pauwels
SOUFFLEUR
COLLECTION PRESENTATION
Like all domains, art has its own vocabulary. In ‘Souffleur', employees of M explain and give background to professional terms that may sound familiar to you, but of which you may not know, or no longer know, exactly what they mean. Three colleagues give their definition of vanitas, collection presentation and hologram.
© M Leuven, foto: Dirk Pauwels
Eveline De Wilde, Collection Manager Contemporary Art“We use the term ‘exhibition’ in M when we invite an artist to show their work, or when we set up a thematic presentation that includes many external artworks.”
“A collection presentation is a different animal. In principle, it only contains objects from M’s own collection, although loans may be included from time to time. The story behind such a presentation comes from the collection itself. The curators let themselves be led by the diversity of objects, they look for similarities, contrasts, connections... This way, we hope to arrive at an innovative view of the collection. At M, the collection is very diverse. We not only keep art, but also, for example, local history objects, archaeological finds and furniture.”
“We always approach visual culture as something very broad. Visitors must be given the space to find their own story. So we certainly don’t say: this is exactly what this work of art represents, and it has this place in history... We do indicate the origin, but we deliberately mix genres and periods, and we invite the visitor to make connections themselves.”
“Collection presentations are essential to M. There are of course pieces that are always on display because they are so important. But the ever-changing collection presentations are still our main way of showing what we have.”
