Moco Hôtel des Collections, Montpellier, France
After the creation of La Panacée in 2013, the recent opening of the Moco Hôtel des Collections brings town planning to contemporary art spaces in Montpellier. Placed under the curatorial direction of Nicolas Bourriaud, these two institutions make up—along with the Ecole supérieure des Beaux-Arts—a fertile ecosystem where teaching, exhibiting, and the apartments of La Panacée interact synergistically. On the occasion of the inaugural exhibition curated by Yuko Hasegawa, thirty-odd works are being brought together from the Yasuharu Ishikawa (a collection begun in 2011), by Nicolas Bourriaud and Vincent Honoré, director of programs and exhibitions, who now speak to us about their vision.
NICOLAS BOURRIAUD: “When Philippe Saurel, Montpellier’s mayor, called me to join in the task of transforming Hôtel Montcalm into an art center or a museum of contemporary art, he mentioned only two things that he wanted to see come about: innovation and destination, that is, an in-town art destination brought to life at different locations along the Line 1 of the city’s tramway. So I worked to build an institution that corresponds to the geographic context and to its time, while reflecting on how to keep in step with today’s artists and with Montpellier as a place. Fairly quickly, I found myself thinking not about a building dedicated to a single function, but to the creation of a sort of chain traversing the downtown of Montpellier, with the Hôtel Montcalm, La Panacée, and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts as important nodes. The plan called for the creation of a complete ecosystem going from the formation of a collection, to the production, exhibition, presentation, and diffusion of artwork. To network these different public places under the same roof and to establish with the professors from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts the connections that would allow the creation of a curriculum geared for this new reality was really exciting.
Early on, the decision was made to use the Hôtel Montcalm not for a specific collection (and this was due to the existence of the Musée Fabre, which is dedicated to a collection and to a museum culture) but for exhibiting private or public collections from across the world. It’s a flexible museum methodology and practice that brings out a specific curating process for each project, based upon the collections from other places in the world. Why? Because more and more, there are collections across the world shown only in private locations or buildings and so hidden from the public eye. Our work consists of allowing the public to access these invisible yet exceptional works. The opening of Moco Hôtel des Collections is a first step in establishing pedagogy and the transmission of knowledge within a complete ecosystem that will lead to collecting, that is to say, choosing work that we want to collect from among the superabundance of contemporary art available today. Through the recommendation of Yuko Hasegawa, I discovered the Ishikawa collection while travelling in Japan. I found it extremely unique insomuch as, while of course very new, it is clearly more international than most Japanese collections, and it has a real sensibility for and a real engagement with today’s art.”
VINCENT HONORÉ: “After having worked for fifteen odd years in London, first at Tate Modern, then at a not-for-profit organization called the David Roberts Art Foundation, and finally at the Hayward Gallery, I was very interested in this opportunity to create in Montpellier a new entity and to build a community around it. The idea of making something for and with the public is very stimulating, a fortiori in collaboration with the Ecole des Beaux-arts and La Panacée, the art center that is unique for having fifty-two CROUS apartments for students. So there was a rather large scope for action.
In terms of the first exhibition, the desire to share the totality of the selected works came from the collector himself who is known in his hometown of Okayama, Japan, for supporting artists and other people as well, and for bringing new life and activity to this community through entrepreneurship and supporting local craft techniques and traditions. Moreover, he decided to create in his hometown a triennial art show—the second iteration will take place next October—that will be curated by various artists, first Liam Gillick, then Pierre Huyghe. This art show will sponsor the production of public works. Bringing the Ishikawa collection to Moco testifies to the elegance of the collection.
Yet, we didn’t want to show too many works, which would have prevented visitors from coming into contact with each of them in the best conditions possible, with the space necessary to think through conceptual pieces, which are by definition difficult to access. For these ends, we have put in place useful mediating tools. But I think more than anything, we have left the works alone to let visitors coexist with them and come to terms with them both formally and intellectually as they see fit.”
“Intimate Distance: Masterpieces of the Ishikawa Collection,” Moco Hôtel des Collections, Montpellier, France, till September 29.