PAN: A letter always reaches its destinations

Pan: small name for the Panacée, Montpellier's center for contemporary culture. Its name, Panacée (panacea) is linked to the previous use of the place: laboratories of the pharmacy faculty... Students and professors moved long ago to modern installations and buildings out of the historical center of the town. The Panacée hosted punctual exhibitions, before its renovation and re-opening on June 22, 2013.

Since then, it is a success.

The Panacée hosts artists in residence, coherent and free exhibitions, a documentation center, and a nice restaurant-bar. Children are welcome in the restaurant (toys, games, pens at disposal) and in the exhibitions (special visits for day-nurseries and schools, including the lecture of arty pop-up books in the documentation center and afternoon-snack in the garden), and workshops (with street artists for instance) are organized for them during the holidays.

Another "plus": if the clients of the restaurant tend, for a good part, to be slightly posh, the attendants are smiling including to children, and the cultural officers are helpfull, available, and provide clear explanations if you like.

The first "season" lasted more than a year, and was untitled: You received a message. It was divided into four successive exhibitions who treated of the various communication ways. Last one, for now (and ever?): Une lettre arrive toujours à destinations.

It is hard with a kid to listen to all the explanations on the works... One is focused on the child's interpretation and use of the work. Far enough of the intention(s) of the artist. Does it matter? Art and litterature also exist in and by the interactions. Artist-art work, art-work-viewer, artist-viewer... Children know it is art. They have been told so, they have been told that it was made to be watched and that it deserves respect and interest. It is a mystery to them, and they wonder about it, and explore possibilities.

With Message from Andrée, Joachim Koester, 2005

I won't give informations on those works here, but the references of some artists are as passionnating as an old movie - let's say The Maltese falcon. I especially loved, personnally, the story "told" by the Bettina Samson's phone booth. Look for it!

Bettina Samson, Cinder Peak Phone Booth Replica (Bluejacking), 2008 

Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled (Placebo-Landscape-for Roni) 1993.
Courtesy Sammlung Hoffman / Courtesy Felix Gonzales-Torres Foundation

Mail-art: the visitors were invited to take part to a permanent workshop. Everyone could take a selfie (the Panacée provided tablets if needed), print it on a post-card, decorate it and write the card. It was pinned on the wall, and sent at the end of the exhibition to a recipient at the address written on the back. You don't even pay the stamp... It was such a good idea it should be institutionnalized in every contemporary art museum.

We "worked" on a photo taken with a work of Mel Bochner:

No Thought Exists Without A Sustaining Support, 1970.

Waiting for the next one exhibition!

Unfortunately, we might have to wait long. Very long.

Everything has a cost, and the municipal authorities don't seem too enthousiast to support this one. The programmation is frozen, the next exhibition postponned. It is sad enough to see those beautiful spaces, pedagogical and communicative skills unemployed. The team of the Panacée and their followers protest and launched a petition on change.org. The city isn't short of money yet. No... the politic of the "grands projets" remains, though the mayor wisely enough decided it would be fine to finish the third tramway line before starting to build the fifth one. I might be wrong, but it seems that some persons suggest that the mayor wants to link his name to a new large museum of contemporary art. I virtuously reject insinuations and trust the seducing admirer of Cambacérès to be culturally and artistically enlightened, as well as historically. But if this last museum might come to life, if will be on the ashes of two "utopias": the Panacée (contemporary art for all) and the musée d'histoire de la France et de l'Algérie (which was aimed to help reconciliating memories, memory and history, in a mediterranean city which was radically changed, in the 1960ies, by the installation of people from north-Africa (whether christian, jewish or muslim)). International scientists worked on the project of the historical museum. There was a petition to save it, too. It has not either decided a reorientation of the expenses - to clean and preserve the historical and natural environment for example.

The free newspaper 'Montpellier notre ville' dedicated this November two pages to the new choices on the culture field. Guide lines: to make dance popular (the next ZAT, to be set Spring 2015, should be very nice, under the direction of Jean-Paul Montanari... and the large place before the City Hall might, surprisingly, turn lively and gay), and to make a large place to contemporary art. Two new places will be dedicated to contemporary art, with the Chapelle des Recollets and the Hotel Montcalm. The action of La Panacée will take a "more social" orientation. Social? It is social: there are artists in residence, people socialize, visitors socialize with artists, artists socialize with students... There could be more meetings with the artists, more activities for kids? Let's invite grand-parents... but not change to much the recipe.
Suspense: the affair has been brought before a powerful academic authority, the weekly Inrockuptibles.
Let's wait and see. 

On the meantime, the cards arrive and bring joy to their destinations.

Thanks!