Acquisition

The core collection of the museum consists of artworks which exceed traditional categories. Quite often they derive from music or dance and reflect the recipient’s relation with the work itself. Especially the “spirit” of Fluxus can be found in many works the museum possesses. This is due to the fact that, although Fluxus reached its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s and now has ceased, its influences on contemporary art are still perceptible. Its modes of expression have been translated into many recent artforms: electronic music, new technology, new media, networking...

By establishing a new kind of temporality in their works artists such as Maciunas, Brecht, Paik or Filiou tried to pull down the existing boundary between art and life in order to reconcile the two. This aspect is very important for the Museum of Contemporary Art Lyon because it can also be found in many of the works acquired for its permanent collection.

Most of the collected artworks try to challenge the limits imposed on them by destroying the conventions of spatiality (Robert Morris, Robert Irwin), temporality (La Monte Young, Terry Riley), materiality (Maria Nordman), visibility (James Turrell) and even the possibility of defining an artwork per se (Dennis Oppenheim).

Without a claim for completeness, the museum collection holds a great number of works of conceptual artists (Joseph Kosuth, Lawrence Weiner, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler), artists associated with Arte Povera (Mario Merz, Luciano Fabro, Giovanni Anselmo) and integrates post-conceptual (John Baldessari) and post-minimalism trends (Sol Lewitt, Dan Flavin).

In addition, it also includes recent examples of Video Art (Bill Viola) and New Media Art (Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau). Lastly, it extends its investigations into time, music and dance, particularly when those realms become closely mingled with the fine arts, as can be found for example in performances by Dumb Type or Jan Fabre.