(Re-)Framing Sculpture. The History of the Swiss Sculpture Exhibition 1954-2024

This is a proposal for an exhibition at the Nouveau Musée Bienne (NMB) entitled “Your sculpture city.” It is an integral part of the SNSF-funded research project “Publics of Art. The History of the Swiss Sculpture Exhibition (ESS-SPA)” in Biel/Bienne (2022-2026). The exhibition is one major visible outcome of the project. It will make available an important part of Switzerland’s cultural heritage through the lens of civil society. The case study of both the SNSF-project and the exhibition is the ESS-SPA series: Since 1954, this national sculpture show has taken place in Bienne and has since left its traces throughout the city and Switzerland. The strong Citizen Science (CS) focus of the SNSF-project will be translated into an exhibition: In March 2023, the project team launched the Citizen Archive (CA) website publics-arts.ch. This website is a platform for crowdsourced and user-generated material on the exhibition series. Additional support of the SNSF for the planned exhibition would allow the project to strengthen its CS outreach. The means to reach this aim are participatory, interactive design elements and a varied, accompanying mediation strategy. This will lead to a diversification of the crowd that has so far handed in original sources of the ESS-SPA history. Without funding by the SNSF, this major outcome of the project will not be possible.The planned exhibition will be a hub: It will show research findings from archives parallel to crowdsourced content: a) objects, photographs, and documents that show forms of public engagement with sculptures in public space in Bienne; b) interactive, participatory environments to showcase and further implement the CS part of the SNSF-project; c) an outreach program with sculpture walks and archival workshops; d) an exhibition catalog jointly produced by the research team, the museum team, and MA students of the University of Bern. The goal of this exhibition is to show everyday forms and formats of public engagement with sculpture that are connected to the history of the ESS-SPA. The exhibition identifies four forms of reframing sculpture: a) re-use: adaptation by civil society; b) re-curate: alternative exhibitions set up by members of civil society; c) re-circulate: user-generated photographs and digital culture; d) re-mix: artistic care work. The exhibition will take place in summer 2024, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the exhibition series.