Penser le Présent with Andrea Fraser and Marie Fraser

For a critical reading of cartels

This event is organized in partnership with the research program “(D)écrire les œuvres, (re)penser les cartels” (Writing Works, (Re)thinking Labels), led by Anne Dressen (ENS Ulm – SACRe – PSL) and Yaël Kreplak (University of Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, HiCSA, Delphine Lévy Chair).

During this meeting, labels will be discussed from the perspective of institutional critique and critical museology, with two lectures: one by Andrea Fraser (artist, Los Angeles), and the other by Marie Fraser (theorist, Montreal). These two presentations, introduced and moderated by Anne Dressen and Yaël Kreplak, will be followed by a discussion with the audience.

As soon as the question of the label is raised, it becomes clear that this short text affixed near the exhibited objects is a subject of debate. Whether it is its size, length, location, what it says, who wrote it, how and for whom it was written, or even its very presence: all these different aspects give rise to numerous discussions and there is no consensus. This is because the label reveals a certain understanding of the role of the museum and its relationship to the works, its different ways of addressing its audience(s), and what constitutes a work of art or a heritage object.

Launched in September 2024, the research program “(D)escribing works, (re)thinking labels” aims to explore the issues surrounding labels, line by line, by questioning what is at stake in the precision of a provenance, the description of a material, the presence of a date, the formulation of a title, or even the mention of an author's name (or several). In a dialogue between artists, researchers, and museum professionals, the aim is to question the ways in which we understand and describe objects, and to imagine other ways of relating to them – to make the label a medium for reflection and creation.

Andrea Fraser is a performance artist and essayist, and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is a leading figure in the institutional critique movement. Since the 1980s, her work has explored art and its institutions—in their financial, political, and emotional dimensions—as in the series of lecture-performances Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk (1989), in which she appears as a guide, or through installations that question the usual instruments of museum communication – in particular exhibition texts, as in Notes on the Margin (1990/2013) or Collected: The Lady Wallace’s Inventory (1997). She has also published numerous critical texts (e.g., 2016 in Museums, Money and Politics, in 2018).

Marie Fraser is an art historian and professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal, where she holds the Research Chair in Curatorial Studies and Practices. Co-founder of the international research and reflection group CIÉCO on new uses of collections, she is the author and editor of numerous publications, including Réinventer la collection. L’art et le musée au temps de l’évènementiel (with Mélanie Boucher and Johanne Lamoureux, PUQ, 2023) and L’Activisme dans les collections (with Lisa Bouraly, Marges, 2025). She is also active as an exhibition curator: she was chief curator at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (2010-2013) and curator of the Canadian pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015.