Brian Castriota and Claire Walsh
Electronic Media Review, Volume Seven: 2021-2022
ABSTRACT
This talk presents ideas around collecting and care in relation to a body of performance-based artworks newly acquired by the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). It focuses on The Touching Contract—a collaborative work by Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones that confronts the reach of statehood from the perspective of the female body. Given the social and political specificities of The Touching Contract and the strong desire by both artists for it to be understood as a work with a distributed and delegated authorship, we are consciously working to acquire and care for the work following the principles of the collaborative methodology and feminist ethos in which it was made. In this talk we contextualise the ongoing acquisition process for this work and the unique ethics of care it embodies in relation to IMMA as a national institution, Ireland’s postcolonial context, and the highly contentious legacy of institutions of care in Ireland. As it is entering the IMMA collection in parallel to the development of our acquisition policy and processes around collecting performance, we also consider how this acquisition prompts a queering of wider entrenched museological policies, norms, and suppositions around ownership and care.
AUTHORS
Brian Castriota
Art Historian and conservator
Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, New York, NY, USA
Claire Walsh
Assistant Curator: Collections
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland