Performance, as the practice of liveness and instant gesture, is not in principle destined to become an object of collection and exhibition. Indeed, unlike durable, material art forms such as painting and sculpture, performance art carries with it the idea of the obsolescence of the art object, and is structured around a bodily action that is necessarily ephemeral and immaterial. And yet, despite the impossibility of storing it in storage or exhibiting it on a picture rail or pedestal,^[1] performance art has gradually made its way into museums, and since the early 2000s has become the object of an ever-growing number of curatorial practices. Museums such as the Tate Modern in London, MoMA and the Guggenheim in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and MAXXI in Rome have significantly opened up their collections to performance art, acquiring both recent creations and works by established historical figures. The question of transforming performance into a museum collection object has thus become central, both in the academic field and among contemporary art conservation professionals. This phenomenon of "musealization," which therefore implies the idea of transformation, has been (and still is) the subject of numerous debates, even controversies.

In the 1990s, for instance, Peggy Phelan adopted a notably radical theoretical position, arguing that performance is inherently— ontologically speaking—unrepeatable, non-reproducible, and therefore destined to disappear. According to this perspective, the transmission of a performance would only be possible through the memory of those who witnessed it, thereby excluding documentation from the field of performance. "Performance’s only life is in the present," she writes. "Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representation: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance."^[2] This was a point of view defended in the years 2000 by other researchers, such as Rebecca Schneider^[3] and Diana Taylor,^[4] who postulate that the documents and objects that the museum acquires will never be able to capture and restore the very essence of the work. 

To this initial stance, defended by certain artists such as Vito Acconci or Chris Burden who for a long time rejected the idea of preserving their actions, other perspectives have, of course, been added. Among them is the position articulated by Gérard Genette who, in the mid-1990s, argued that there are two ways in which "a performance work may, to some extent, escape its temporal condition as an event,"^[5] two distinct yet converging means, namely: "recording" and "iteration." By "recording," Genette refers to any kind of visual and/or audio reproduction of the performance. This essentially includes photographs and video recordings, which have come to constitute the primary documentary forms associated with performance, documents that have, moreover, contributed to the phenomenon of musealization. Video (or film) and photography are, indeed, the primary sources acquired and exhibited by museums, largely because they serve as irrefutable evidence of a performance’s existence.

When Genette speaks of the second mode, "interation," he is clearly referring to a practice that has become systematic since the early 2000s: reenactment. This term designates the practice of re-performing an original work in order to reassert its intrinsically live and ephemeral nature, even though such re-performance inevitably involves new interpretations, and hence sometimes significant variations. Both artists and, increasingly, museums have embraced the reenactment of historical performances, thereby opening the way for iteration to become a legitimate mode of performance presentation. In this context, performance becomes musealized not through a physical or material transformation, but rather through a conceptual one that consists of recreating it, necessarily on the basis of documentation intended, for example, to guide the performers in the work of reactivation. Such documentation may include video or film recordings, photographs, sketches, notes, correspondence, articles, all of which, alongside performance protocols and re-performance rights (such as certificates), are now integrated into museum collections and thus preserved. In this documentation, which serves to historicize, re-enact, and exhibit performance, there also exist physical artifacts sometimes referred to "relics." These may include garments worn by the artist, accessories used during the performance, or fragments of set design.

These objects occupy a hybrid and often ambiguous status: they may be viewed either as traces of past artistic action or as autonomous artworks, which museums acquire and exhibit. An interesting example is ORLAN’s performance MesuRAGE, carried out in 1977 and acquired by the Musée national d’art moderne-Centre Georges Pompidou in 2009. In addition to the certificate and photographs, the museum also acquired objects such as the dress worn by the artist during the performance. These documents and objects were subsequently brought together into a unified ensemble titled Action ORLAN-CORPS, presented to visitors as an artistic installation.

The progressive inclusion of performance art in museum collections, while having a significant impact on contemporary art history and the meaning, identity, and cultural legacy of tewntieth and twenty-first century performative practices, also has an effect on the conceptual, methodological, and physical structures of the museum itself which on most occasions acquires only descriptive documents related to these ephemeral works and in some cases "nothing." Such is the case with Tino Sehgal’s This Variation (2012), performed in the dark at Documenta 13 in Kassel, or the work This Situation (2007) conceived in the form of "oral communication," which in 2010 entered the Musée national d’art moderne-Centre Pompidou’s visual arts collection with the mention "Sans domaine déterminé" [no specific domain] as well as the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal in 2011, offering no additional information other than the year of purchase and inventory number, or David Lamelas’s Time (1970) which as Clara Gormley states "in 2006 was acquired for the Tate collection using funds provided by the 2005 Outset/Frieze Art Fair Fund, making it one of the first examples of a performance bought by the institution in the form of a set of instructions explaining how to restage it."^[6]

By questioning the notions of uncollectable, time-based art, and reenactment the acquisition of these works—notably a series of elements that were functional to the realization of the performance including artists’ annotations, descriptions, objects, residues—by some of the major contemporary art museums not only affects traditional musealization and curatorial practices but also reflects on the pivotal role that artists play in the process of describing, documenting, and preserving their past performances in an institutional frame. As was pointed out in the text Archiving Live Performance Art: The Case of Otobong Nkanga (2022) by Lotte Bode, from a theoretical and methodological point of view, the progressive musealization of performance art inevitably requires collaboration between museum collections and artists in the development of protocols that also legally define the conditions that should be respected in order for performances to be archived and reenacted.^[7] In the critical essay Reenactment: Errant Images in Contemporary Art (2018), Cristina Baldacci discusses this topic and interprets the concept of reenactment as follows:

As artistic strategy it implies the reactivation (over time) and remediation (on different supports) of images stemming from a vast visual repertoire that artists—especially those working with time-based media (film, video, performance)—appropriate in order to give them new meanings. As curatorial practice and critical method, reenactment regards the remaking of impermanent artworks and the restaging of temporary exhibitions to possibly offer an understanding of (art) history that gives preference to a visual and performative, sometimes immersive, approach.^[8]

Over the course of the 1960s, the visual and performative artists like the neo-avant-garde experimental poets called into question the museum’s social role, they discussed the public (as well as conceptual, povera, and "dematerialized") dimension of art, and they took their works beyond the institutional circuits, imagining exhibition spaces that were alternative to museums and art galleries. Pioneer events in Europe such as the performance realized by James Lee Byars in front of the Düsseldorf Kunstacademie in the month of June 1969, the Campo Urbano exhibition (Como, 1969), and the performative poetry Festival de Fort Boyard (1967) that never took place physically and that was conceived by Henri Chopin to be experienced solely by way of the posters made by the artists invited to participate, document and affirm this dissident approach, foreshadowing the provocative actions of the Institutional Critique of the early 1970s. "The art of those years," observes Birgit Pelzer, "intimately destabilized both, on the one hand, the norms of perception, authentification, and validation of the works, and on the other hand, the consecutive rules of exchange, acquisition, and preservation in museums."^[9]

Traced back to the legacy of Germano Celant’s seminal analysis on the circularity of the relationship between artistic production, market, curatorial practices, and musealization, in the essay La musealizzazione/museificazione dell’Arte Povera [The Musealization of Arte Povera, 2011], Maria Vittoria Marini Clarelli carefully reconstructs the historical and cultural dynamics that involved, in the decade from 1960 to 1970, the works by several members of the Arte Povera movement, dividing them into three essential stages: "Uscire dal museo" [Exiting the Museum]; "Rientrare nel museo" [Re-entering the Museum]; "Restare nel museo" [Remaining in the Museum].^[10] The essay ends with the words of Piero Gilardi (which the author says are "prophetic"): "‘Actions,’ ‘geographical projects,’ and ‘dematerialized’ expressions will increasingly be exhibited in museums, private galleries, and in the illustrations in books, as part of a far-ranging cultural control that the international artistic establishment will apply to the new avant-gardes."^[11] Gilardi’s insight significantly underscored by Marini Clarelli resounds of absolute actuality if we consider the vestiges of a series of corporal actions made in 1960s and 1970s by the artist Ewa Partum exhibited at the Brussels Art Fair 2025.

In this case, the objects used in some of her performances (scissors) and the relics derived from it (strands of hair, pubic hair) are dispayed in an installation by an art gallery (Galerie Ewa Opalka, Varsovie), are presented in the context of an art fair, and are confronted with the art market that involves a different kind of audience that is no longer just that of the museum. The exhibition of some remnants of a series of performances in the context of a contemporary art fair is an emblematic case study as it leads scholars and curators to broaden theoretical and critical paths related to the acquisition and preservation of performance art. Indeed, on this occasion the performance’s remains can also be sold to an art collector by becoming part of a private collection.

From Janet Cardiff’s audio walks (1991–present) to Kimsooja’s performance sculptures entitled Encounter – Looking Into Sewing (1998–2002), from the reenactment in 2008 at the Tate Modern of Alison Knowels’ collective salad performance (Make a Salade, 1962) to Ann Veronica Janssens’ 50 Km of Atmosphere To Give a Deep Blue (2025), the controversial relationship between action, documentation, and musealization continues to animate the contemporary critical debate, and is at the core of the theoretical and methodological insights pursued by art historians, critics, archival, and performance curators.^[12] 

Key research projects developed in recent years on the topic include: Performance at Tate: Collecting, Archiving and Sharing Performance and the Performative (Tate Modern, London, 2012-2014), Collecting the Performative (Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 2014), Archiving Ian Wilson (Galerie Jan Mot, Brussels, 2022), Archiving Performance (Center for Art Archives, Research Centre for Visual Poetics, and M HKA Museum, Antwerp, 2022), Rilevamenti d’archivio. Le Settimane Internazionali della Performance e gli anni ’60 e ’70 a Bologna e in Emilia Romagna (exhibition section created in 2022 as part of the MAMbo’s permanent collection in Bologna), Performance: Conservation, Materiality, Knowledge (HKB Bern Academy of the Arts, 2020-2025)—to know more about this project see: H. B. Hölling, J. Pelta Feldman, E. Magnin (eds.), Performance. The Ethics and the Politics of Conservation and Care, vol. II, London, Routledge, 2024; H. B. Hölling, J. Pelta Feldman, E. Magnin (eds.), Performance. The Ethics and the Politics of Conservation and Care, vol. I, London, Routledge, 2023—as well as the publication of the book Live Forever. Collecting Live Art (Walther König, Köln, 2014) with critical contributions by Teresa Calonje, Catherine Wood, and Tania Bruguera. Pioneer and recent exhibitions focusing on artistic historical reenactment are: A Little Bit of History Repeated (Kunst-Werke, Berlin 2001); A Short History of Performance (Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, 2003); Life, Once More: Forms of Reenactment in Contemporary Art (Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2005); History Will Repeat Itself: Strategies of Reenactment in Contemporary (Media) Art and Performance (Hartware MedienKunstVerein, Dortmund, 2007; Kunst-Werke, Berlin 2007-2008; Centre for Contemporary Art, Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2008). These institutional initiatives are just some of the most significant testimonies in Europe of the encounter between performative, curatorial, and museum practices in the 21st century.

Based on an integrated methodological approach that combined the critical and theoretical perspectives of art history, performance studies, and curatorial studies, the essays included in this special issue provide an in-depth analysis of this changing relationship between action, documentation, and musealization, from 1960 to the present time, focusing on the various ways in which performance art has been and continues to be acquired, preserved, exhibited, and reactivated within museum and exhibition contexts.

Philip Auslander (Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta) and Hanna B. Hölling (Bern University of the Arts) reconsider performance through the lens of its material dimension, challenging the canonical view of this form of art as inherently ephemeral. Thanks to the role of documents, residues of action, and conservation practices, performance continually constructs and rewrites its own status, oscillating between transience and objecthood. It is primarily through repetition—understood as a method of reactivation and preservation—that, the authors argue, performance acquires a new form of stability.

Tancredi Gusman (Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata) focuses his analysis on the inseparable relationship between live performance and documentation, demonstrating how visual and material records are not mere ancillary traces, but active elements in the co-creation and meaning-making process of the artwork. Drawing on a series of emblematic case studies, the author proposes an interpretation of performance as a dialectical space between presence and representation, authenticity, and mediation, revealing a direct continuity between action and memory.

The crucial role played by temporary exhibitions in the construction of performance art history is at the center of Barbara Büscher’s (Leipzig Academy of Music and Theatre) contribution. By analyzing several exhibitions and events held in the United States in recent decades (such as Rituals of Rented Island, promoted by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2013, or Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, a traveling exhibition from 2013 to 2015), the author highlights how curatorial choices shape which works and artists are included in an ever-evolving canon, and how these decisions reflect dynamics of cultural inclusion and exclusion.

Mélanie Boucher (Université du Québec en Outaouais) investigates the presence of performance in the collections of three major international museums—Centre Pompidou, MoMA, and the National Gallery of Canada—highlighting the challenges that this art form poses to museum systems traditionally oriented toward stable, unique objects. Through an examination of different categories and modes of acquisition, description and cataloging, Boucher highlights how these processes transform both the definition of performance and the canons of preservation and musealization.

Anne Bénichou’s (Université du Québec à Montréal) essay centers on the acquisition in 2022 by the National Gallery of Canada of The Sámi Architectural Library, an installation by Norwegian Sámi artist Joar Nango. She reads this case as an example of an artistic practice capable of initiating a process of museum decolonization. By analyzing documents related to the conservation and restoration of the artwork, the author introduces the concept of "preenactment" to highlight the constructive and collaborative relationship established between the artist and the institution, wherein Indigenous performative art becomes a space for both design and political agency.

Francesca Gallo (Sapienza Università di Roma) reconstructs and analyzes the presence and reception of performance art within Italian museum institutions, with a focus on the Roman scene between the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries—particularly on initiatives promoted by the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (GNAM) and MAXXI. While the former has mainly embraced this art form through historical and retrospective exhibitions, the latter has developed an ongoing policy of acquisition, exhibition, and promotion of performative practices. Gallo interrogates these dynamics, emphasizing the tensions between ephemerality and permanence, score and improvisation, authorship and interpretive "delegation."

Finally, Marie Quiblier (Université Lyon 2) analyzes the pioneering experience of the Musée de la danse, conceived in 2008 by Boris Charmatz at the Centre chorégraphiquenational de Rennes et de Bretagne (CCNRB). Through experimental practices such as living installations, performed documentation, and participatory happenings, the Musée de la danse explored new ways to preserve and transmit movement, interpreting the body as an active and dynamic archive capable of offering original responses to the challenge of performance permanence.

Despite the diversity of approaches and perspectives examined, the contributions gathered in this issue ultimately share the intention to challenge traditional categories of the artwork and documentation, as well as the forms and functions of the museum institution. This constellation of perspectives outlines a critical and operative horizon that invites a reconsideration of performance not as a testimony to be fixed or crystallized, but as a living practice to be preserved, reactivated, and continuously reinterpreted over time.

 

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