‘MUSEUM/enfants non admis’: Arriving Late to Marcel Broodthaers

In 1968 the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers inaugurated the Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles at his home in Brussels, with the Section XIXème siècle. In 1972 Broodthaers closed his Museum at documenta V with the Musée d’Art Ancien, Département des Aigles, Gallery du XXe siècle. The art historical discourse framed the fictitious Museum project as institutional critique. My essay shifts the focus to the historical critique embedded in Broodthaers’s Museum by introducing an analytical meditation on the project’s temporality. Following the artist’s references to a large span of historical periods in the Museum’s Sections, my essay claims that they demonstrated disjointed temporalities. The Museum, temporal and ephemeral, was anchored in its present time, and left very little material traces.