THE MUSEUM OF LOSS AND RENEWAL is an art project that offers space and contexts for making and sharing, by taking time, nurtured by artists and curators Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen.

Rather than being a museum in the traditional sense that accumulates ‘stuff’, The Museum of Loss and Renewal stimulates people to take time in which to generate thoughts, feelings and ideas. The Museum of Loss and Renewal is a growing collection of experiences that are regularly shared through the activities of its curators, partners and residents, and is a vehicle that enables the consideration of how to lead a more balanced life.

The Museum of Loss and Renewal started in 2011 as a series of exhibitions with embedded interdisciplinary public symposia, artists’ publications and learning situations. It came into being while making work to help us understand, process and communicate the death of Edwin’s father – Wim Janssen – by assisted suicide in the Netherlands. Through artistic approaches we addressed our own, and societal attitudes towards end of life situations and issues, and to palliative care. Funding from The Wellcome Trust global charitable foundation that ‘… wants everyone to benefit from science’s potential to improve health and save lives’ supported our work and contributed to us working with Scotland’s Highland Hospice, that provides free services to those in need, works in partnership with local communities and supports professional and unpaid carers.

Merging art making, collaborative learning and artistic research The Museum of Loss and Renewal manifests itself in multiple forms such as exhibitions, public studios, screenings, publications, gatherings and curated residency programmes. We develop art projects, often in collaboration with others, that address issues of societal concern such as well-being, care, (personal)histories, (in)formal collections, land use / land futures, habitation and sustainability.

The Museum of Loss and Renewal nurtures relationships between creative people across disciplines, worldwide. The Individual Residency Programme Taking Time / Prendendo Tempo and Group Residency Programme Place, People and Time are situated in Collemacchia, in the Apennine mountains of Italy’s Molise region. The Group Residency Programme Air, Sea and Soil takes place in Scotland’s Orkney Islands in partnership with The Pier Arts Centre.

The Italian village of Collemacchia has been home to Tracy’s Italian family for centuries and strong links are fostered with the local community which is highly supportive of the residency programmes. Working always with participants and publics in mind, the Covid-19 Pandemic catalysed The Museum of Loss and Renewal’s first online residency, Wild Ways, (2021) activating networked, remote modes of being to enable an enriched investigation of The Museum of Loss and Renewal’s core concerns.

Tracy & Edwin explore and communicate Collemacchia’s immediate environment through e.g. drawing, collecting artefacts, photographing and filming, exhibiting, publishing, developing ‘memory maps’ (counter mapping), audio recording, engaging with local archives and collections, participating in and contributing to field-guide and interdisciplinary group walks.

They are continually presenting and testing internationally, their approaches to the relationships between art, society and audiences and they work across gallery, museum, site-specific, participatory and socially engaged practices, and commissioning. They are motivated to create connections between people, place and time, and by what happens when encounters between (creative)people and place occur. Their skills and modes of working are activated to investigate collaboration, collecting, commissioning, (imagined)futures, (layered)histories, (experimental)mapping, memory(ecological, material and ruin), recording, site(responsiveness), (intersections of)material/immaterial realms, territory, (deep)time, (shared)traditions, walking as practice and art-writing.

The Museum of Loss and Renewal’s collaborative partners include artconnexion, Danica Maier, dpr-barcelona, MAP magazine, My Bookcase, Pier Arts Centre, Studio The Future / The Future Publishing and Printing and The Walking Library.

Funding support for The Museum of Loss and Renewal has been provided by Creative Scotland, Highland Hospice, The Henry Moore Foundation, Create Networks / Look Again Aberdeen, The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Timespan Museum & Arts Centre, Dundee Alcohol and Drug Partnership, The International Society of Addiction Medicine (isamDUNDEE 2015), Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design Research, University of Dundee, The Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture, Sir William Gillies Bequest, artconnexion, Institut Français, Ville de Lille, the MacKenna Sales family, The Wellcome Trust.

TRACY MACKENNA & EDWIN JANSSEN

Tracy and Edwin began collaborating in 1997 after meeting as participants in Manifesta, the roving European Biennial of Contemporary art. Prior to this each had solo careers. Their collaborative art practice is a creative and discursive site where production, presentation, exchange, learning and research meet. Information about their work can be found at Tracy Mackenna & Edwin Janssen.

Tracy (SCO-IT) is an artist and educator, Professor Emerita, and an alumna of The Glasgow School of Art and The Hungarian University of Fine Arts. She exhibits and publishes internationally and has had solo exhibitions at e.g. Barbican Centre, London; CCA Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Arnolfini, Bristol. In her individual practice and research Tracy employs drawing, video, walking and writing as dialogical processes to activate playful, provocative and non-linear properties of language within visual art practice, giving new and refreshed voice to collaborators and subject-matters.

Extensive periods have been spent living and working in France, Hungary, Italy, Romania and the Netherlands making art, and establishing art networks and artist-led organisations. She is a founding-Director of Glasgow Sculpture Studios, and contributed to the establishment of the French art organisation artconnexion that creates innovative connections between artists and society. She is an Academician of the Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture.

As Professor Emerita, Tracy holds the Personal Chair of Contemporary Art Practice at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee. Educational practice has been focused through the Masters programme MFA Art, Society & Publics which she devised and lead, and multi-partner international projects that through specific subject-foci, enable co-learning and co-created outputs.

Edwin (NL) has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums such as Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands; Museum Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany and Wiener Secession, Vienna, Austria.

His PhD project explored artist-led curatorial practice, institutional critique, museum culture and cultural recycling.

Curatorial experience includes ‘Commitment’ (Las Palmas, Rotterdam), a presentation of works and projects by 120 visual artists, designers and architects who work in the Netherlands, commissioned by the Foundation for Visual Art, Design and Architecture, Amsterdam.

(Dr) Edwin has returned to full-time art practice after an academic career (-2019) as Lecturer in Contemporary Art Practice at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee and Lecturer and Programme Leader at the Academy of Art and Design, Arnhem, the Netherlands. He was Chairperson of the Visual Arts Award Panels at the Foundation for Visual Art, Design and Architecture, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.