Whose Museum
The Collection Body
Assemblage, dimensions variable
2008-2020
Whose Museum is an art collective and loose archival network that began in Vancouver, Canada, in 2008 as a journey to challenge what a museum is and can be. Here everything bureaucratic becomes ornamental, all discard gains in value, and nothing is straight forward except the donation: Anyone can donate anything to the collection.
At the beginning, the collection was cared for in archival storage boxes and made accessible through a database searchable online. However, it soon took on a life of its own. The database crashed and objects broke out of their storage boxes. We found that the collection had become a body and member of our collective.
The Collection Body of Whose Museum is permeable and in a constant state of flux. Items from the collection are sometimes altered by artists, traded or loaned with visitors to the museum. They have been eaten, made into sculptural installations and tattoos.
So far, the items range from the banal to the bizarre, including drawings, discarded objects, prosthetic body parts, plants, songs, and ephemera. It has continued to expand over the years, and has been widely exhibited, traversing bars, galleries, sushi restaurants, shop windows, artist studios and backyards; part of many exhibitions, events, and still-life drawing sessions. It has also been featured in a music video, show posters, paintings, photographs, album art, and magazines.
If you would like to donate an item to the collection, simply fill out the form and add the item to the body in the exhibition. Are you curious about something in the museum? Do you have suggestions for something you want to do with us? Contact our remote support by filling out the request form and send it to info@whosemuseum.org.
Image credit: Sixten Autumn & Whose Museum, Crash, 2013 (detail).