The mumok Museum of Modern Art Ludwig Foundation Vienna is launching a new educational program in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). There are two dates in June:
- 5 June 16:30h Curator's tour of the exhibition in ÖGS Park McArthur. Contact M
- 26 June 16:30h Curator's tour of the exhibition in ÖGS Never final! The museum in transition
Park McArthur's exhibition makes multiple connections to the topic of inclusion and accessibility.
Park McArthur is a wheelchair-bound American artist who uses her mobility impairment as the basis for her artistic exploration of themes such as disability, existential dependency, discrimination, and marginalization. The exhibition at mumok brings together, for the first time, artworks created between the 2010s and 2020s. The works and the forms they take are guided by the personal and social meanings of disability, delay, and dependency.
With their work Ramps, which is centrally represented in the exhibition, the artist first became known to a wider public in 2014. The installation consists of ramps that she herself used to visit art institutions in New York.
In another work, Carried and Held, a kind of wall text, she lists the names of all those who have worn and held her since 2012 – among them not only relatives and doctors, but also fellow artists and flight attendants.
The exhibition is a collaboration between mumok, Vienna, and Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, and can be experienced simultaneously at both venues. In addition to the exhibition, an audio guide designed by the artist herself is available at the museums and can be streamed on their websites.
It states, among other things:
"And the impact of a work of art: Who owns it? Sometimes a work of art goes unnoticed, even though you might have expected otherwise. Sometimes a work of art embodies a memory of all those who carried you and those who held you. Sometimes a work of art fills a room in that way."
The exhibition tour on 5 June will be led by Matthias Michalka, the curator of the exhibition Contact M by Park McArthur, and Elke Schaumberger, who will provide simultaneous interpretation into Austrian Sign Language.