The line between work of art and documentation is negligible

“For example, the Chilean group CADA (Colectivo Acciones de Arte, 1979-1985) recently offered their achive to the Reina Sofia, lacking confidence that a Chilean institution could preserve it. The Reina Sofia paid two researchers to catalog the archive and worked to ensure that an institution in Chile would house it; in return, the museum received an exhibition copy of this archive. In the case of CADA, whose work consisted primarily of performances, actions, and interventions, the line between work of art and documentation is negligible. However, this documentary status increasingly defines the most politically engaged art of the late twentieth century. In order to redefine the Reina Sofia as an ‘archive of the commons’, the museum is therefore attempting to legally recategorize works or art as ‘documentation’. This recategorization increases accessibility to works of art – for example, the public can go to the library and handle them, alongside publications, ephemera, photographs of works of art, correspondence, prints, and other textual materials.”

(page 44)

Claire Bishop, Radical Museology: Or What’s Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art? London: Koenig Books, 2013.