Pierre Leguillon: The Museum of Mistakes

Founded in Brussels in 2013 by Pierre Leguillon, the Museum of Errors is a traveling exhibition that takes place in museum rooms like a circus itinerant who comes to town and leaves again. The rest of the time, the collection is stored in the artist's studio, mainly in the cupboards of his kitchen. Most objects are mass-produced and their material value is negligible: postcards, record covers, large posters and small, fabric pieces, ceramics, folk art, children's drawings and others various objects. The book also brings together objects considered too small, too fragile or too insignificant to have been exhibited, as well as photographs of scenes daily street photos that illuminate the different facets of the collection. Whether signed or anonymous, these objects defy any claim to authority. at a time when visual culture is shared on social media and on the web, without distinction of material or aesthetic value, often without legends and, too often, with erroneous attributions. For Leguillon, the Constant sorting and reshuffling of objects helps us revisit the conventional and subverted interpretations, with a good dose of humor, the kind of cultural “ready-to-wear” that so many museums serve us today. Essays by Patricia Falguières and Morad Montazami situate the Museum of Errors in the tradition of art museums and the phenomenon of cultural appropriation, while Carrie Pilto writes captions in style free in comments of the objects presented. Pierre Leguillon (born in 1969 in Nogent-sur-Marne, lives and works in Paris) is an artist, curator and author known for transforming the slideshow into a poetic, subtle and humorous performative form. His “Slideshows” – composed of photographs taken by the artist – offer through connections unexpected images of new classification systems. Leguillon realizes also assemblages as well as enigmatic dioramas exploring the work and life of artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Diane Arbus, Ad Reinhardt, George Ohr and Jean Dubuffet. His work has been shown in institutions such as that the Moderna Museet (Malmö, Sweden, 2010), Musée du Louvre (Paris, 2009) and Artists Space (New York, 2009). He edited Sommaire between 1991 and 1996, and his texts have appeared in Purple, Artpress and Le Journal des Arts.