Since the 1990s, the MuCEM has been conducting collection surveys on contemporary urban practices. Since 2000, it has amassed one of the largest collections of graffiti identified today, counting nearly 1,500 objects. It is an amazing assortment of graffitied panels, posters, markers, spray paint cans, magazines, sketches, photographs, videos and more, all associated with a survey that laid the foundations for a discussion of social relations in urban environments, the question of the appropriation of public spaces, and its conquest by means of “street” practices.

This collection will be displayed in Marseille in 2017, in part at the Museum of Contemporary Art (covering the historical aspects of the hip-hop movement) and in part at the MuCEM (in the Collections Room at Fort Saint-Jean, as recent concerns recent acquisitions on a number of highly active Mediterranean stages like Marseille, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, and more).

This presentation will precede an exhibition cycle built entirely around the MuCEM’s collections, conserved at the Centre for Conservation and Resources, in the Belle de Mai district of Marseille.

Curators : Claire Calogirou, Associate Researcher at IDEMEC and exhibition curator, and Jean-Roch Bouiller, Conservator of Contemporary Art at the MuCEM