Conceptualizing Exhibitions as Sociopolitical Research: An Analysis of European Exhibition Practices of the 1990s

This article examines the role of contemporary art exhibitions in the process of the political integration of Europe between the Cold War’s end and the European Union’s Eastern Enlargement. To do so, it analyzes a range of inter-European exhibitions that aimed to construct and disseminate a new notion of a ‘united’ European art world. These exhibition projects intended either to ‘bring together’ artists from the former East and West, so as to break the dichotomies of their distinct sociopolitical roots, or to conduct major surveys on Eastern European art, aiming to legitimize art from the region and place it into a universal cultural context.