Here we go again.

After the last visits in December the thought process about the collaborative exhibition of an US Museum and a museum in Europe have been circulating and come more into shape by us curators (Charles Esche, Stephanie Smith and Kerstin Niemann). This time we travel, explore, talk about and visit places and people with a more focused agenda, but still a series of questions of where this open research process will take us and how we will translate it into an exhibition. The travel will take us first to Minnesota, then Chicago (Illinois) to catch up with Stephanie Smith (co-curator) and altogether we plan to explore the city of Detroit (Michigan), which neither of us has been to before.

First stop of our trip will take us to Minnesota, the state of the US where the Mississippi originates (in Duluth) from Lake Superior and forms into a river.

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For the third research trip, Charles Esche and Kerstin Niemann of the Van Abbemuseum have returned to the Heartland area in the United States. This concludes an extensive investigation for the upcoming multidisciplinary project Heartland, which kicks off on October 3 in Eindhoven. Heartland, initiated by the Van Abbemuseum is a collaboration between many partners, including the Muziekcentrum Frits Philips, Eindhoven and the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago. The exhibition curators travel this time to Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit and Memphis to do on site research, make studio visits and lead workshops that will form the developing concept and contents of the Heartland project. An extensive visit to the Walker Art Institute in Minneapolis and the Ann Harbor University of Michigan is part of the tour.
Heartland is multi-dimensional project in Eindhoven featuring existing and newly commissioned art works and an international music programme called Into the Heart of Music. The project is dedicated to art and music that emerges out of the area’s rich cultural and geographic diversity. The programme also includes a series of debates and lectures, two publications, an artists-in-residency programme and various special projects with local and international partners. It is the first time that a project of this scope has been initiated in Eindhoven. The official premiere / opening is scheduled for 3 and 4 October in Eindhoven where the project will run until 25 January 2009. After that, part of the exhibition will travel to Chicago. The collaboration between the Van Abbemuseum and the Smart Museum promises to combine insider and outsider perspectives on visual culture in the region in which individual artworks will be related to each other while being able to speak clearly about particular cultural, social and natural phenomena.

Why heartland?
The image that we in the Netherlands have of the US is mainly the result of media reports coming from the major cities on the East and West coasts, as well as the main trade centres of the US. With Heartland, we want to steer away from these positive and negative clichés. The Heartland, the interior of the US on the banks of the Mississippi and its tributaries, has seen many crucial historical developments. With its diverse indigenous and immigrant cultures, the ‘delta’ is a benchmark for the country’s multilayered identity. It has become an intriguing mix of old and new traditions, where it seems that the social and political climate is largely determined by religion and race. Examples that have touched the region in significant ways include the population’s steady move westward, the Civil Rights Movement, the ebb and flow of the many waves of religiosity and its constant development as a major economic force. These factors have found their way into the art and culture produced in the region or commissioned for this exhibition. The Heartland project also coincides with the next US presidential elections and will inevitably form a artistic and musical counterpoint to the non-stop media coverage of politicians and reporters.

At our first stop in Minneapolis, Minnesota we met up with staff from the Walker Art Center as well as artists and other cultural activists of the Minneapolis arts community…

Here am I back again in the United States following up upon on what the Van Abbemuseum have been working on in the last couple of months collaboratively with US institutions and individuals. Following up upon the very many conversations and meetings of the first research travel in July/August 2008 we, the curators, decided that I will go back to the US on a second trip.

From the 3rd until the 20th of December I will travel to Miami, Houston, Memphis, Knoxville, St. Louis and Chicago to research on site, following up established contacts and doing studio visits with Heartland based artists. In Memphis it is planned to concretize the collaboration with the Rhodes University of Memphis as well as the Memphis College of Art to host at least one artist in residence from Europe for a period of about two months. The first artist in residence of the Heartland project is going to be the Dutch/American artist Otto Berchem. The Amsterdam based artist is looking forward to the challenges, and most exciting prospects, of spending a prolonged period of time in Memphis beginning of 2008: tackling the clichés and pre-conceived notions, both his own, and those of a Northerner/European of the ‘Heartland’, and specifically of the South. After Memphis I will continue traveling together with co-curator Stephanie Smith from the Smart Museum in Chicago. We will go on a road trip together from St. Louis to Chicago to experience some unique historical sites of the “Heartland” and meet up with custom and culture of the region alongside the way. Beginning of March 2008 Charles Esche and Kerstin Niemann plan to continue the third part of our research travels in the Heartland region, among others visiting the collaborating institutions for the artist in residence projects, the Smart Museum in Chicago as well as other contributing institutions and individuals.

You as a visitor of the blog and a follower of our travels are invited to get active. Feel free to add comments to the different experiences and subjects, that we, the researchers, report upon. The webblog is an interactive tool for us and the museums to think through the importance and the influence of the experiences on the road.

Note: As a reminder on what the “Heartland” project is about here a few notes: Timed to coincide with the next U.S. presidential elections that will provide European audiences with a more nuanced picture of the Heartland region the Van Abbemuseum in collaboration with the Smart Museum in Chicago plans to present a group exhibition in October 2008 examining the situation in the “Heartland”. This project is an ambitious collaboration between two transatlantic art institutions: the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven/NL and the Smart Museum, Chicago/IL. These two sites combine insider and outsider perspectives on the visual culture in the region and are developing a working methodology where both perspectives will be presented in each location. The exhibition “Heartland” is co-curated by Charles Esche, Kersten Niemann, and Stephanie Smith. Esche is Director of the Van Abbemuseum and Co-Editor of Afterall Journal and Books. Niemann is Research Curator at the Van Abbemuseum and Founder of Filter, an international contemporary art plattform in Hamburg. Smith is Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smart Museum.

From the 25th July, a weblog of the upcoming Van Abbemuseum exhibition project “Heartland” will be online. Everyone can follow the travels in the heart of the United States on http://heartland.vanabbe.nl.

“Heartland” is the working title of a large-scale exhibition planned for October 2008 in the Van Abbemuseum. The show will include art, craft and folk art, music and visual culture from the interior of the United States, reflecting on the core of this country at a time when the next US presidential elections will be the focus of the world’s political attention.

In order to research the culture and prepare the exhibition, Charles Esche(director Van Abbemuseum) Kerstin Niemann (guest curator Van Abbemuseum) and Otto Berchem (artist) will travel together from 25th July to 7th August. The journey will take them from New Orleans to Minneapolis, from the south to the north of the country through the states that border the great mythical river – the Mississippi. They will travel through city and country, industrial towns and farming villages, reservations, swamp areas and rich and poor neighborhoods, meeting artists, musical and craftspeople along the way.
The Van Abbemuseum created this weblog, so that they can report their findings back to you on the blog. It will include interviews, pictures and comments of people that they find on the way and will track developments of the project as it takes shape.

This is the first time that such a cultural research trip has been opened up to public view. http://heartland.vanabbe.nl will allow those interested in the process of making an exhibition or in the United States as seen through three different pairs of eyes, a unique insight into a museum’s way of working.

This project has been realized in part by a contribution of Mondriaan Foundation.