This ‘research exhibition’, led by Victoria Walsh as Principal Investigator and funded by the EU Framework 7 scheme as part of the 'Museums in an Age of Migrations' (MeLA) project, brought together international artists and curators to consider the following questions and other questions of artistic and curatorial urgency as museums begin to think about their future and role in the 21st century:

- How are globalisation, digital media and changing patterns of migration affecting our understanding and experience of the contemporary work of art, and how are contemporary artists engaging with curators to think about the condition of the contemporary through their work, its display and collection? - How are curators working with new forms of artistic production, particularly ‘immaterial’ works of art, that fall outside conventional forms of display, collection and archive?

The six collaborations were:

• MACBA in Barcelona with Victoria Walsh and Bartomeu Marí and artist Lawrence Abu-Hamdan
• Bétonsalon - Centre for art and research in Paris with curator Mélanie Bouteloup and artist Camille Henrot
• Whitechapel Gallery in London with curator Sofia Victorino and artist Kader Attia
• Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam with curators Jelle Bouwhuis / Kerstin Winking and artist Quinsy Gario
• Royal College of Art in London with Paul Goodwin and artist Leo Asemota

In particular, the research exhibition reflected on the challenges and opportunities of curatorial and artistic research in the 21st century, and the rise of new forms of practice such as performance, sound, and video which are both expanding the range of artists’ interests and challenging conventional ideas of the ‘art object’ in museums and galleries. Following what has been described as ‘the curatorial turn’ and ‘the educational turn’ the exhibition considered how complex the interface is between issues of representation, globalisation, collection and object, curating, programming, audiences, and technology.