Domus presents Pleinmuseum in Milan, during designweek 2008

From the 16th till the 19th of April, Pleinmuseum will visit Milan and strike down on the big square in front of Milans Central Station: Piazza Duca D'Aosta. Pleinmuseum will be presented here by Domus, thé international magazine about design and architecture. Domus celebrates its 80th birthday during this years' designweek. Apart from the main collection of Pleinmuseum, the program contains a daily report about the designweek and a video about the creator of Domus, Giò Ponti, a famous Italian designer and architect.

photo: ©2007 Marc Verhille / Mairie de Paris: Pleinmuseum in Paris during Nuit Blanche.

Pleinmuseum is a mobile exhibition pavilion that places itself at the hearts of public life, opens as a flower, takes on new appearances every day and travels on after a while. Every evening from sunset Pleinmuseum will present a variety of the 100% digital collection. In each location also new artists are invited to create a new contribution to Pleinmuseum. Till now Pleinmuseum was presented in ten cities.

October 2007 Pleinmuseum stroke down at Place de la Bastille in Paris for la Nuit Blanche. The 'white night' is one of the biggest highlights in Paris' agenda of culture. Every year, around two million people straddle through Paris' citycenter and admire the many artpieces specially selected and put on streets and squares. June 2007 Pleinmuseum was presented at the 52nd Venice Biennale as part of the collateral program Pan European Encounters, organised by David A Bailey, Arts Council England and Mike Phillips, TATE Britain. During the symposium about 'Curatorial Awareness in times of globalisation' Pleinmuseum was presented as 'The Migrating Museum'.

Watch a short report of Pleinmuseum at the 52nd Venice Biennale at www.vernissage.tv (7 minutes).

A new museum concept
Pleinmuseum is a new concept: an open and flexible museum that is approachable and accessible, placed on a square in the city centre, forming a natural part of urban life. During daytime, the pavilion remains closed and as such symbolically refers to the 'white cube', the paradigmatic model of the modernist museum. After sunset, the cube opens itself hydraulically and forms a dynamic architectural installation that embraces space. The white walls become projection screens that continually take on new appearances, like the skin ofa chameleon. In this manner, Pleinmuseum becomes a temporary stage for visual communication; a platform through which artists and designers can communicate with a broad audience. The designer of Pleinmuseum, René van Engelenburg, focuses on the relationship between art and public. He intends to develop projects, mostly mobile, temporary and open architectural structures that forge a dynamic relationship with public space, activating this space as the key physical and conceptual parameter for the ideas of the participating designers and artists. Multidisciplinary
In cooperation with curators Meta Knol, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht and Edwin Jacobs, director of Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden, Pleinmuseum invites artists, whose work is interdisciplinary and context-oriented, to develop innovative and diverse collaborations.