Erratum

The title Representing the Nation is borrowed from Representing the Nation: A Reader: Histories, Heritage and Museums by Jessica Evans and David Boswell, published in 1999. Key writings from leading thinkers in cultural studies, cultural history, and museum studies ask what role cultural institutions play in creating and shaping our sense of ourselves as a nation. With an international perspective, the contributors investigate whether cultural artifacts can represent all of us equally, as members of a given nation.
Notable changes: The National Gallery in Prague (ITCA 2008) appears reflective in their own position as a national institution and open for discussion and self-reflection. The title of the publication is also the title of our national survey of the regional galleries in the Czech Republic, and their respective positions relating to institutional practices, strategies, and mediators of knowledge. The current title “ERRATUM” includes the names of the authors of the original texts used in the publication. A new cover design has been created for the “re-issuing” of the publication for the Formats, Transformation – Identity exhibition at the House of Arts in Brno, 2009

Portraits from meetings with directors and curators in their respective offices. One compensation portrait is assigned to each institution in the form of a text.
Notable changes: “Compensation Portraits” apply appropriated texts as readymades, replacing the vague comments or statements made by the directors. Introducing an artificial institutional discussion, the formal installation in the ITCA / NG exhibition opened up the possibility for Representing the Nation / Compensation Portraits to function as a temporary site where the institutional context of the NG in Prague, in particular, could be addressed.

Creative Commons already apply to most of the original texts collected from eipcp.net, while the rest of the texts are unauthorized, both in original and in translation. The section with “Thanks to” indicates the true authors of the texts, as a prelude to this ERRATUM version. All of the sponsors listed at the bottom of the page are fictitious. The idea is the sponsors was, as mentioned above, to give the publication a serious feel.