Works to Know by Heart: An Imagined Museum Works from the Centre Pompidou, Tate and MMK collections

You’ve arrived at Tate Liverpool in the future. All of the works of art on display are about to disappear, forever. Which works of art do you want to know by heart, committing them to memory so that your favourite piece lives on?

An Imagined Museum: works from the Centre Pompidou, Tate and MMK collections sees three major European art museums bring together over 60 major, post 1945 artworks from their prestigious galleries. On display will be works by Marcel Duchamp, Claes Oldenburg, Bridget Riley, Dorothea Tanning, Andy Warhol, Rachel Whiteread and many more. 

The exhibition invites audiences into a fictional scenario in which the exhibited artworks will cease to exist and asks visitors to memorise the works to secure their future preservation. An Imagined Museum draws on Ray Bradbury’s 1953 sci-fi novel Fahrenheit 451, a tale of a distant future in which works of literature are banned and the only way to save them is to learn them by heart.

The exhibition will culminate with an exciting final weekend (20 – 21 February). All of the artworks will ‘disappear’, leaving the gallery to be replaced by members of the public who will personally recollect the missing art works to become 2053: A Living Museum.  Visitors can expect to enjoy an array of multi-art form, live performances.

Part of Tate Liverpool’s autumn/winter season, entitled Works to Know by Heart, the exhibition encourages audiences to take an active role in the exhibition and to form a personal relationship with the artworks on display.

An Imagined Museum will be presented consecutively at Tate Liverpool (20 November 2015 – 14 February 2016), MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main (24 March 2016 – 11 September 2016), and at Centre Pompidou-Metz (21 October 2016 – 27 March 2017).

Banner credit: MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Photo: Axel Schneider © Sturtevant Estate Paris