• ISBN 978-3-89770-468-8
• Editor Brandenburgischer Kunstverein Potsdam e.V.
• Publisher Salon Verlag
• Language german, english
• Format 28 x 20,5 cm, 176 pages, color & b/w illustrations, soft cover

• ISBN 978-2-84066-720-9
• Designer Émilie Fourny
• Herausgeber Les presses du réel
• Sprache english
• Format 15 x 24 cm (hardcover), 432 Seiten, farbige Abbildungen

A school and cultural center shaped like a crayfish: this is no hallucination but a commission by the Houma native tribe from Louisiana, soon to be built by architect Rudy Ricciotti under the New Patrons' Protocol.
Created by artist François Hers, this protocol offers everyone the means to commission a work of art, turning a privilege of the few into an opportunity for all. Being a patron acquires a new significance: it is not about financing the making of a work of art, but about stating its raison d'être. This protocol has led to the creation of more than 300 artworks in France, Italy, Belgium, Germany and elsewhere, by renowned artists such as Christopher Wool, Liam Gillick or Camille Henrot.

This book brings together the New Patrons and its American cousins: participatory and socially-engaged art. Through articles by preeminent European and Anglo-Saxon thinkers and curators, it explores the artistic and political issues raised by these contemporary practices. It reveals their common aspirations of inventing new ways for art to play a social role, to produce effects, to be part of people's lives—and puts to the test the belief that art can change life.

• ISBN 978-2-84066-905-0
• Publisher Les presses du réel
• Language english
• Translation from the French by Emmelene Landon.
• Format 14 x 19 cm (softcover), 56 pages

Reflecting upon the necessary conditions for the development of the New Patrons Protocol, the French conceptual artist François Hers calls for a better involvement of museums as well as for an art history that would relate creative processes with political conditions.

A new model of action to invent new modes of art production and exchange by establishing a direct dialogue between the artist, the citizen-commissioner and the cultural mediator, outside the museum and apart from the art market.

Who gets to determine what artworks are displayed locally? What should they show? Who should they represent? As Alexander Koch explains in the magazine of the German Federal Cultural Foundation, the New Patrons programme addresses fundamental issues that highlight the tension between civic participation and artistic representation.

Read online version

Issue #59 of Spike Art Magazine looks at the non-heroic ways of doing things differently that can open our minds and make the world better. With an excellent text by Dominikus Müller about Neue Auftraggeber. Thanks to Spike for allowing us to publish this text online.

The general idea of Neue Auftraggeber is that ordinary citizens can commission art from internationally renowned artists for their living environment and are supported by experienced mediators. The programme is based on the Les Nouveaux Commanditaires programme founded in France by François Hers in 1990, which has since been very successful in several countries. Tobias Asmuth presents an exemplary project in a small village in France, which has brought the place – and the programme – the greatest public attention.

The association "Neue Auftraggeber" (New Patrons) puts the creation of art from the head to the feet: citizens decide what they need, and famous artists deliver. Article by Georg Imdahl in Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Read article (in German)