Nick Aikens

Nick Aikens is a curator, editor and educator. He is employed as researcher at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg and is the Managing Editor and Research Responsible for L’Internationale Online. He assumed his role in August 2023 as part of the four year, EU funded project ’Museum of the Commons’.

Nick has a PhD from HDK-Valand, an academic partner of L'Internationale. He was previously Curator at the Van Abbemuseum (2012–2023) where he worked on numerous exhibitions and publications as well as leading the research programme Deviant Practice (2016–2019). He was a tutor and course leader at the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem (2012–2019) and Guest Professor in the department of Exhibitions and Scenography at Karlsruhe University (2023–2024).

L’Internationale: A Mission Statement in Times of Emergency

This talk by Nick Aikens and Charles Esche will be structured around the seven-point mission statement of L’Internationale, a European confederation of 16 museums, arts organizations and universities. It will be framed by the urgency of the present conjuncture and the need to rethink the public sphere in times of genocide, militarization and ecological collapse.

The mission statement, recently co-written by its board, outlines the current vision of L’Intnernationale, almost 15 years after its founding. Starting with a small cluster of European museums from Istanbul to Barcelona, L’Internationale began as a propositional coalition to situate modern and contemporary art in different social and political histories and avoid the homogenization threatened by the market, private investment and franchise museums. Today, it has evolved to include universities, non-collecting institutions and coalitions between art and activism. Through a reading of the statement by Aikens and Esche, the talk will turn to past and present propositions for shared heritage, constituency-led work, a museum of the commons, the de-centering of European narratives and epistemologies, and ecologising museums.