On 18 and 19 February 2009, a long-term collaboration between the four founding institutions represented by Zdenka Badovinac (Moderna galerija, Ljubljana), Georg Schöllhammer (Július Koller Society, Bratislava), Bartomeu Mari (MACBA, Barcelona) and Charles Esche (VAM, Eindhoven) was initiated in Ljubljana; later they were joined by the fifth institution M HKA, Antwerpen, represented by Bart de Baere.

Moderna galerija is the national museum of modern and contemporary art. As a museum of modern art it explores and presents the 20th century Slovene art tradition, while as a museum of contemporary art and exhibition venue it presents new art practices and their context. Moderna galerija is also a documentary, research and education centre, a place for discussion and reflection. Moderna galerija houses the national collection of 20th century art, a collection of works from the former Yugoslavia, and the international collection Arteast 2000+, based on a dialogue between works by key artists from the European East and the West.  
Moderna galerija will in the future divide its professional activities among two buildings (the principal museum building, which was re-opened after the renovations in October 2009) and the premises in the former army base in Metelkova Street which are being renovated this year.

Moderna galerija is the initiator of the project and as a coordinator will have the managing and steering role throughout the duration of the project.

The Július Koller Society (SJK) is a non-profit association of citizens whose aim is to preserve, research, enrich and relate to the public the artistic heritage of Július Koller. A collection site and archive of the artist’s work, a research and study centre, as well as a place for public debate and reflection, the SJK organizes domestic and international projects and activities in the areas of fine arts, art history, visual studies and cultural theory.
It furthermore encourages the exchange of ideas and information in these fields, challenging the canons, geographies and master narratives of established art histories. Opposed to a reduction of arts and culture to their economic, populist or merely spectacular aspects, one main focus of the SJK is to research and highlight the specific conditions and histories of anti-canonical, peripheral and hitherto marginalized artistic practices.

The Július Koller Society is contributing to the long-term collaboration of L'Internationale with its unique archive of the Slovak artist Július Koller (1939-2007). His archive and artistic heritage is covering a wide range of the visual culture of the socialist time – from design and technology to everyday culture – and is to a big extend in the hands of SJK.

The mission of the Museum for Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA) is to explore, present and research contemporary art production in the horizon of today socio-economic conditions. Over the last decade, the Museum has adopted a leader position not only through the well-research exhibitions dealing with key aspects of a metamorphic Modernity but also through an intense public programming, the newly founded Research Center, the critical Study Program and its commitment towards education. The collection is a key reference tool of the institution to develop its program guidelines. With over 4000 works, it is an example of research into a non-canonical understanding of art history. The whole represents an effort towards a different reading of how Modernity takes place differently, how reception works in contemporary art as well as the best way to engage our audiences in understanding the place we are and the futures we can articulate from here in terms of culture.

L'internationale represents the possibility to understand our research with the collection in a collaborative context creating a system of partnership with institutions sharing the same sense of responsibility towards art history writing and education. Access is key to the project. The MACBA collection will then become a source for others to study and exhibit works creating a fruitful form of dialogue and interpretations of the materials.

The Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven is one of Europe’s leading museums for contemporary art. The museum’s extensive international collection of around 2700 works of art includes key works by Lissitzky, Picasso, Kokoschka, Chagall, Beuys and McCarthy. The museum has an experimental approach towards the issues of art and society. Openness, hospitality and knowledge exchange are important to the Van Abbemuseum. We stimulate ourselves and visitors to think about a range of subjects, like the role of the collection as a cultural 'memory' or the museum as a public place. International cooperation and exchange have made the Van Abbemuseum a place for creative cross-fertilisation. A source of surprise, inspiration and imagination.

The Van Abbemuseum seeks to establish a long-term collaboration with the other partners of L'Internationale. To this end, the museum will offer priority access to loans from its collection of modern and contemporary art to the partners not only for the Internacionala exhibition project but also for other exhibitions and projects in the partner institutions.

The Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (M HKA) is one of the eight large cultural institutions of the Flemish Community. It combines the functions of an international contemporary art museum with those of a film museum, except for the archival role of the last. It owns a collection of pre cinema and cinema hardware beside its art collection. This art collection starts with the mid 1960s happenings as realised in Antwerp by Panamarenko, who donated the museum his house and the assets in it. M HKA wants its collection to respond to the present reality of a globalised multipolar world. It feels its core role to be the proposal into public domain of a hypothesis on contemporary art and its possible relations to urgencies in society. In order to do so it reorganised itself and thinks the collection as ABCD (archives, library (bibliotheek), collection and documentation) but feels that any of its activities remakes this body of the collection as a proposal of art within society.

M HKA will develop a specific reflection which enhances the overall project by hosting and publicly presenting the Julius Koller archive and by relating this archive to its own reflections on the archive on the archive as collection.