The insufficient museum, the artistic clinic and the receptor’s microperception on Lygia Clark’s Structuring of the Self

Abstract

This article discusses the challenges faced by traditional museology regarding contemporary art exhibitions, revealing deficiencies and searching for possible paths. For that, it utilizes as an example the Structuring of the Self, Lygia Clark’s last work which stands on the borderline between the atelier and the psychiatric clinic, exhibited at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, in 2006, under Suely Rolnik’s trusteeship. Supported on philosophical, psychoanalytic and critical texts, the article analyses that specific case and tries to place it on a much broader dilemma, in vogue, which involves curatorial, artistic and aesthetic reception proposals at contemporary art museums.