« Les musées font partie de la façon la plus nette des maisons de rêve du collectif »
– Walter Benjamin
Réenchantement du musée : l’art contemporain au Freud Museum
“À l’image du fantôme, l’enchantement fait retour précisément où il a été banni ou supprimé. Ce que Max Weber (1864-1920) a nommé par le « désenchantement du monde » dans cette phrase désormais célèbre : «Le destin de notre époque se caractérise par la rationalisation et l’intellectualisation et, par-dessus tout, par le “désenchantement du monde”» offre un point de départ pour envisager la notion de l’enchantement et de ses effets. Du passage des collections des chambres des merveilles et des cabinets de curiosités des 16e et 17e siècles vers celles des premiers musées publics au siècle des Lumières, l’institution muséale a vu le jour avec l’amorce d’une pensée scientifique qui rationalise, organise et, pour ainsi dire, « désenchante » le monde.”
Auteur: Véronique La Perrière M
Muséologies, Les cahiers d’études supérieures
Volume 9, numéro 2, 2018
“Museums unquestionably belong to the dream houses of the collective”
– Walter Benjamin
SUMMARIZE
The reenchantment of the museum: Contemporary art at the Freud Museum
The opening of history museums to contemporary art and to interventions involving their collections could presage a new paradigm for the relationship between artists and these museums. Although artists and museums benefit from various standpoints from the event dimension associated with the phenomenon of giving “carte blanche” access to col- lections, conclusions regarding the meaning and the effects of this practice for the collections and objects of past history remain to be drawn. Perceiving in the phenomenon of the encounter between contemporary art and historical collections indications of a renewed relationship to time and history, this article considers the notion of enchantment as well as the way the “carte blanche” phenomenon can contribute to the reenchantment of the museum. The case of the Freud Museum in London, which introduced a program to integrate contemporary art within its collections, as well as the exhibition “Sigmund’s rug: To sleep to dream no more,” presented at this same museum by the artist Anne Deguelle, are analyzed in support of a viewpoint that expands on the notion of the enchantment of the museum and its effects on history. Enchantment is thus presented as a vector for the expression of an alternate temporality and history. From the same perspective, the social and symbolic meaning of the museum space is discussed, particularly in the light of Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, and is reaffirmed as a space for research bound to the imagination and to dreams.