ArteEast Quarterly: What is an Institution?

Founded in 2003, ArteEast is a leading New York-based nonprofit organisation dedicated to engaging a growing global audience with the contemporary arts of the Middle East and North Africa. ArteEast Quarterly is a web-based magazine that offers ongoing updates on arts news and events pertaining to the Middle East and its diaspora. In this summer's ArteZine is guest-edited by Cairo-based arts initiative Beirut. Founded in Cairo on June 30, 2012, amidst a moment of collective rethinking, reforming and overturning of institutions, Beirut’s founders dedicated their third season of their first year to asking: What is it to build an institution as a curatorial act? Can an institution evolve using the language and logics of art practice? If social and political imagination is a prerequisite for change, can the realm of art be imagination’s guardian, nurturer and inspirer in a time of economic and political violence? In late April 2013, Beirut invited international colleagues from Art in General, FormContent, Kunsthalle Lissabon and CCA, to convene in Cairo for a three-day meeting dedicated to exploring the essential question of what an institution is or can be. This issue of ArteZine represents a record of the thoughts and ideas that emerged out of the conversations that took place during those three days. For this issue of ArteZine, please follow this link.