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migration: Migration is the movement of persons from one country or locality to another. Or it refers to a group of people migrating together. Migration has always been an important factor in human history and is a central element in understanding how human beings adapt to their environment and construct their social and cultural worlds. The magnitude and range of contemporary migration - whether voluntary or forced - is impressive, as are the ways in which this movement challenges assumptions about national borders, human rights, the nature of global economic development, and the basic structure and coherence of our own societies. We are interested in how artists think about these challenges and the potentials of this situation.
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modernism[s]: Modernism often refers to a political, cultural and artistic movement rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century which embraced change and the present, and thought the 'traditional' forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated. This movement directly confronted new economic, social and political aspects of an emerging fully industrialized situation. More recently, reappraisals of this history challenge the singular and exclusive nature of this term, suggesting there were many modernisms beyond what became the Modernist canon. The art museum is often positioned within this Western Modernist tradition but we want to think rather in terms of modernisms which are culturally diverse and multiple.
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museum: The history of the museum extends back to the eighteenth century. As such, it has been one of the keystones of cultural democracy and a site where the contestation of aesthetic values have been played out. As a public institution it has always had a political function, sometimes using that status to question itself and its political environment. We believe that the museum is one of the few sites in what is left of the public sphere where common topics can be addressed collectively on the grounds of art. The museum is, perhaps, a useful anachronism today, in an increasingly privatized western European society, yet it can successfully be used as a tool to expand the space for new thinking about our surroundings and our ways of life. Be[com]ing Dutch intends to push the museum to reflect on its changing environment by reassessing its duties to art, artists and to society.
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