VITORIA-GASTEIZ.- Artium Museoa, Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country presents the exhibition Artelekun zehar. 1978-2002. An Exhibition about Arteleku through the Archive (A3 Gallery until 11 January 2026). Curated by Mikel Onandia, Sergio Rubira, Leire Vergara and Artium Museoa, the exhibition focuses specifically on the first fifteen years of the Arteleku training and production centre. It continues the research begun with A Place to Think (2022) and edonor denok inor ez (2024) on the relationship between artistic practices and pedagogy in the Basque Country. To accompany the exhibition, Artium Museoa has published a booklet containing texts by Onandia, Rubira and Vergara. As part of the exhibition opening, the museum has also organised a meeting with the curators at 6 pm, with free admission and limited capacity.
Artelekun zehar. 1987-2002 is the third and final chapter in Artium Museoa’s series of exhibitions dedicated to the relationship between artistic practices and pedagogy in the Basque Country. Focusing specifically on the first fifteen years of the Arteleku training and production centre, the exhibition builds upon the research that began in A Place to Think (2022), on experimental educational initiatives between 1957 and 1979, and edonor, denok inor ez (2024), which explored the institutionalisation processes of artistic training between 1978 and 1991.
The Arteleku Centre for Contemporary Art and Culture opened in the Loiola neighbourhood on the outskirts of Donostia/San Sebastián in 1987, under the auspices of the Gipuzkoa Provincial Council. Led by Santiago Eraso, the centre’s main goal was to focus on responding to the needs of contemporary art, so it immediately defined an orientation and some ways of doing based on experimentation and artistic production, with pedagogy and the transfer of knowledge at its core. Arteleku organised a host of activities, primarily in the form of workshops, seminars and exhibitions, and by the 1990s and early 2000s it had become a benchmark for artistic creation.
Starting out with a structure that prioritised artistic production across disciplines according to the logic of techniques and media, it evolved over the years towards approaches that transcended traditional production systems and established working methods, welcoming international artists and voices who brought with them the latest trends and debates in contemporary creation. It also witnessed the development of discourses on the body and a progressive dematerialisation of art.
The exhibition takes the institution’s archive, preserved at the Gordailua Heritage Collections Centre in Gipuzkoa, as its central axis. It is complemented by a selection of works from the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country’s holdings, that of Gordailua itself and its audiovisual archive, deposited at the CICC Tabakalera. The show also features a significant collection of documents, including the Isabel Azkarate and Ricardo Iriarte archives, among others.
Included in the exhibition are various interviews that have been conducted for the project with people linked to Arteleku, including Fernando Golvano, Izaskun Irizar, Gabriel Villota, Iñaki Imaz, Ion Munduate, Blanca Calvo, Manu Muniategiandikoetxea, Miguel Ángel Gaüeca, Estíbaliz Sádaba, Antoni Muntadas and Alicia Chillida.
The exhibition is curated by Mikel Onandia, Sergio Rubira, Leire Vergara and Beatriz Herráez, with Elena Roseras collaborating on the archives section and Arantza Santesteban on the audiovisual documentation section. The show will run at the museum’s A3 Gallery until 11 January 2026.
