Maumaus: An (Auto)Biography of an Organisation

This thesis offers a comprehensive account of the emergence and evolution of Maumaus—an art organisation dedicated to education, curation, and production founded in Lisbon in 1992. Through an analysis of its history and the values and principles that underpin its programmes, this (auto)biography of the organisation—produced by a practitioner who is himself inextricably bound in this history—conducts a self-aware exploration of the ways in which Maumaus has, since its founding, reflected and continues to reflect developments and shifts within the art world and art education.

As much as this is a discussion of Maumaus’s development into an international school characterised by local beliefs, it is also the narrative of my own learning and re-education: Maumaus went from being a local photography workshop to being an Independent Study Programme, and I myself went from being a German-educated sculptor to being the director of a study programme founded on the perpetual inquiry into art as a conceptual practice.

This work focuses on the Maumaus School’s formative first two decades and examines the organisation's transition from a working and thinking model based on a conventional concept of artworks to models of conceptual art that brought with them a new approach to art education. This transition is discussed in relation to the postmodern turn, which emphasises a shift from an object-based to a context-based understanding of art, and its subsequent implications for art pedagogy. Consequently, the analysis pays particular attention to how the exhibitions organised by the Maumaus School contributed to this shift.

The thesis is organised into two parts, beginning with an introduction and ending with a conclusion. The first part provides a detailed overview of the development of Maumaus. The second part examines the various discourses and artistic practices that have influenced the relationship between teaching and exhibition-making within the organisation. This forms the basis for narrating Maumaus's overall history and extending the discussion to the socio-economic and political circumstances relevant to its development.