Incidente no Museu, ou Música Aquática (Incident at The Museum, or Water Music) is an installation by Russian-American artist Ilya Kabakov (1933), typical of the multidisciplinary nature of his work.  Like so many pieces by the artist, architecture and mise en scene are key. In this specific work, the installation replicates the rooms of a respectable 19th century museum. They contain an exhibition by a Russian painter named Stepan Yakovlevich Koshelev – a fictional character created by Kabakov as a critical metaphor for Soviet painting in the first half of the 20th century. Koshelev is imagined as someone who lived through the October Revolution and, in its aftermath, reinvents himself as an official artist of the new regime, achieving a post as a professor in Moscow School of Sculpture and Architecture. There, he would introduce his students to his own art movement “Synthesism”. This blended the principles of Cézanne – Koshelev greatly admired work – with the ideals of Soviet Realism, while also encompassing other 20th century avant-garde trends, such as Fauvism and German Expressionism. Fictional posters and publications support this scenario, which Kabakov uses to create a space for historical speculation on the mysterious and vast entity that was the Soviet Union, and its political culture. This speculation also extends to the incident that gives the piece its title.

Within the fictional surroundings of the installation, something unexpected happens on the opening day of the Koshelev exhibition. Water starts streaming down from the ceiling of the exhibition rooms and the 14 oil paintings by the imaginary Russian master (painted by Kabakov, naturally) are seemingly endangered by this catastrophic “deluge”. At this turning point, the supposed “staff” of the museum respond with buckets, plastic hoses and other materials, improvising solutions to hold back the waters. The sound of water falling and hitting metal and plastic fills the space. These rhythmic and arrhythmic noises have their own musicality, orchestrated here by Vladimir Tarasov (1947) – a composer who worked with Kabakov on this and other pieces. The public is invited to enter and intervene in this environment, interpreting the historical fiction it evokes and participating in the unexpected and immersive visual and sonic experience that conditions all potential messages the installation may convey.

Incidente no Museu, ou Música Aquática (Incident at The Museum, or Water Music) was first shown in the Ronald Feldman Fine Arts Gallery in New York in 1992. After the closure of this first showing, the work went on tour. It made its second stop at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago in 1993, before leaving the United States for Europe at the end of the year, where it debuted, in 1994, in the Hessisches Landesmuseum in Darmstadt, Germany. It then travelled south, showing at Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona and, finally, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG), in Lisbon – both of these events in 1995.

At the FCG, the opening took place on 31 August, at the Temporary Exhibition Gallery of the Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão [José de Azeredo Perdigão Modern Art Centre] (CAMJAP), the institution that produced this version of the exhibition in Lisbon and oversaw its inclusion in the 1995 edition of cultural event Encontros ACARTE.

Following an invitation by Manuel Borja-Villel, then director of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies Museum, FCG architect Cristina Sena da Fonseca travelled to Barcelona prior to the production and hanging of the exhibition to ascertain the installation requirements and assess the feasibility of staging it in the CAMJAP. This marked the beginning of the cooperation between the two foundations and the artists Emilia and Ilya Kabakov, who both travelled to Lisbon, together with composer Tarasov, to assist with the assembly of the piece and attend the opening. Letters held by the Gulbenkian Archives contain various assembly plans annotated and sent by Kabakov (Gulbenkian Archives, CAM 00458).

In 1995, the Kabakovs began to reach the heights of international recognition they enjoy today. At the same time as this solo exhibition at the FCG, another major exhibition by Ilya was on show at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The Gulbenkian ordered copies of the catalogue (Ilya Kabakov. Installations 1983-1995, 1995) to complement the volumes published specifically to mark the exhibition.  Another publication acquired for the same purpose was Ilya Kabakov. On The "Total" Installation (1995) – a major anthology of texts and graphic materials based on 15 lectures delivered by the artist on the concept of the “total” installation, clearly reflected in the work showing at the Gulbenkian at the time. These publications were joined by a two-volume bibliography published by the MCA of Chicago, specifically to accompany Incidente no Museu, ou Música Aquática (Incident at the Museum, or Water Music + Stepan Yakovlevich Koshelev, 1993). This bilingual publication (in Russian Cyrillic and English), made available in Lisbon, fed into the fiction while simultaneously unravelling it. It includes a conversation between Ilya Kabakov and J. Bakštein, a Portuguese translation of which is held by the Gulbenkian Archives, as well as an introduction to the concept behind the piece, which also appears in the catalogue from Chicago. The translated versions were probably available on paper in the exhibition rooms (Gulbenkian Archives, CAM 00458).

Coverage of this Kabakov exhibition in the Portuguese media includes a TV feature that appeared on the 5 October 1995 episode of the series Ver Artes on state broadcaster RTP, in which sculptor Rui Sanches, then deputy-director of the CAMJAP, provides a brief introduction to the exhibition. The same episode also followed critic Alexandre Melo, responsible for the show’s concept, as he visited the workshop of Michael Biberstein (1948-2013) to talk about the exhibition “A Difícil Travessia dos Alpes” (“The Difficult Crossing of the Alps”) also on display at the CAMJAP.

The highlight of coverage in the written press was an interview with Ilya Kabakov by José Sousa Machado and Carlos Vidal, which appeared in the magazine Artes & Leilões (Vidal, Artes & Leilões, n.º 33, Oct 1995, pp. 10-16). Vidal also published another article for Spanish magazine Lapiz (Vidal, Lapiz, n.º 117, Dec 1995, pp. 60-65).