Arte Útil Lab

The Museum of Arte Útil is a collaboration between the artist Tania Bruguera, the Queens Museum of Art, New York and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. The Museum of Arte Útil is the result of Tania Bruguera’s decade of research into a concept that emphasizes effectiveness and implementation over representation, looking at historical and contemporary examples of alternative strands in socially informed art practice.

“Útil” as a term refers to something being useful. But it goes further… Show more than the English translation, encompassing the idea of a tool or device. Bruguera states that “Arte Útil moves beyond a propositional format, into one that actively creates, develops and implements new functionalities to benefit society at large.”

The project will comprise research, an online platform, an association of Arte Útil practitioners, a series of public projects, a lab presentation at the Queens Museum of Art beginning in February 2013, culminating in the transformation of the old building of the Van Abbemuseum into the Museum of Arte Útil in the Fall of 2013 and a publication. The aim is to present a survey of past and present projects that are rooted in the notion of art’s use to its users and to society at large. Central to the project’s various forms is this open call.

The notion of what constitutes Arte Útil has been arrived at via a set of criteria that Bruguera and the participating museums’ curators have formulated. These criteria will set the parameters of the project and its working methodology.

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