Over the past decade, the focus in contemporary art has shifted from the figure of the curator to the exhibition space. This shift is manifest in numerous recent publications that retrace and document exhibition history, seeking to establish a distinct discourse and to incorporate it within an art history centred exclusively on the works, and within a museology that sees the exhibition as a museum function. In this context, it is interesting to observe the proliferation of re-exhibition projects that have emerged in the course of the same decade; for example, the re-enactment of cult projects such as When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013, or the exhibition-scale reproduction of Chambres avec vues (1999) as part of the Pierre Dorion retrospective presented at the MACM in 2012. 

Significantly, in parallel, artists have begun appropriating the exhibition space and exploring new formats and modes that push exhibition boundaries and offer the spectator a very different experience. Two high-profile examples that have come to light over the past year include Pierre Huyghe at Centre Pompidou, in which living beings literally inhabited the exhibition, and Anywhere, Anywhere, Out of the World by Philippe Parreno, which radically transformed Palais de Tokyo by forging complex relationships between the works and with the exhibition space. Some artists are also appropriating museographical elements typical of history, ethnology and science museums—their modes of presentation, historical re-enactments, as well as dioramas, tableaux vivants, or period rooms. What are the implications of these artistic practices that rethink the relationship between artwork and exhibition or adopt the exhibition as a medium or device? There are many aspects to this question: notably, the idea that the exhibition is no longer limited by space or time; the possibility that exhibitions are not only coproduced and disseminated but are also re-enacted, as with performance-based works that may be presented again within new contexts; the appearance of virtual, often interactive, exhibitions which transform the role of the spectator, for example.

Thus, the current edition, whose theme was suggested by Marie Fraser, professor of art history and museology at Université du Québec à Montréal, does not aim to contribute to exhibition history or its discourse in the vein of recent publications on the subject, but rather to reflect on its discursive modes, forms, and functions, which today are the subject of unprecedented exploration. Authors are invited to submit texts that examine the various aspects of this relatively new phenomenon or that focus on specific instances of artists, curators, museums, or galleries.