To mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Institut d’art contemporain, the collection was shown in a circuit of seven exhibitions in the Rhône-Alpes region. It echoed the exhibition Ambition d’art presented in situ.
Although each exhibition was designed individually and closely linked with the partner site hosting it, they reflected all the different positions that Jean-Louis Maubant had developed during the preceding thirty years: socio-political involvement, including the militant position of women (at Saint-Donat), minimal art, conceptual art and a new relation with a work that 'happens' in a given place (in Privas); where contemporary art met the spirit of the Renaissance, changes in sculpture (Château de la Bâtie d’Urfé and Grignan), the question of architecture and Utopia (in Annonay), without forgetting an always marked interest in the singular, in unclassifiable artists, both poets and critics (Grignan).
La Maison de la Cure / espace d’art contemporain in Saint-Restitut and Angle art contemporain in Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux (Drôme) were associated with the circuit in specific projects centred on the artists Carl Andre and Claude Rutault, one represented in the Institute's collection and the other invited to the Institute in 1981.
