Charles Esche 'Historical Times: the capacities of an art museum and how it comes to terms with the world today'

In support of continuing dialogue and debate around contemporary exhibition-making, and extending the line of enquiry we initiated in 2009 around a notional bid to host Manifesta in Cornwall,  ProjectBase, in collaboration with the Department of Art at University College Falmouth, has invited international curator and writer, Charles Esche to Cornwall.

Charles Esche is Director of the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands. Between 2000 and 2004 he was the Director of Rooseum Center for Contemporary Art in Malmo, Sweden and is co-founder and co-editor of Afterall Journal and Afterall Books with Mark Lewis. His main concern has been to question the constitution of art institutions, most recently the museum but also the art centre or biennial. His writings on institutional possibility and policy are useful aids to rethinking the relation between art and social change.

He has written for many art catalogues and magazines and a selection of his texts were published in 2005 under the title Modest Proposals by Baglam Press, Istanbul in Turkish and English. He has curated numerous exhibitions, for example; co-curator of the first Tate Triennial (2000) with Virginia Button, and curator of the Gwangiu Biennale, Republic of Korea with Hou Hanru and Song Wan Kyung, co-curator of the Istanbul Biennial (2005) with Vasif Kortun. In 2007 and 2009 he was co-curator with Khalil Rabah of the 2nd RIWAQ Biennial, Ramallah, Palestine and in 2010 he curated the Slovenian Triennale in Ljubljana. Charles was a Board Member of International Foundation Manifesta (2008-2011