悦读

What should the museums of tomorrow be?

Leaders of institutions from all over the world address the future in a new book.

Georgina Adam reports

Fiancial Times December 11 2020

Among all the victims of the pandemic, museums have been particularly hard hit, with their finances cratering and major lay-offs already implemented or to come. In the UK, Tate has announced that it is cutting 120 jobs "to survive the crisis", while cutbacks continue across museums in the US.

But the pandemic is only the latest blow in what has been a dramatic series of shocks to museums, throwing into question their role in society, their governance and even their very existence. These shocks have ranged from the ethics of sponsorship, accusations of racial injustice and lack of diversity, decolonisation issues to turmoil about the very definition of a museum.

The US cultural strategist András Szántó chose the Covid lockdown to examinethese problems. This summer he interviewed 28 museum leaders from 14 countries. He asked them what the role of museums should be—today and in the future—what models they are looking at, how they are grappling with the issues they are facing, what has to change and what must be preserved. The result is a book, The Future of the Museum: 28 Dialogues.

Szántó's choice of interviewees was, he says, deliberately tilted towards younger voices, and while all are museum leaders, the way they got there is sometimes startling. Most trod the classic art history/curatorial path, but one was formerly a competitive boxer (Adam Levine of the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio), another studied nanotechnology (Anton Belov of Garage, Moscow) and another worked for a luxury goods company before directing a museum (Sonia Lawson of Palais de Lomé,Togo).

The institutions they lead are as diverse; they range from New York's immenseMetropolitan Museum of Art and London's venerable Royal Academy, to museums that don't yet exist—Hong Kong's long-delayed M+, the billion-dollar, spaceship-shaped Lucas Museum of Narrative Art being built in Los Angeles—or the "museum without a ceiling", the High Line in New York.

So what should a museum be? "They should be artist-led and audience-focused," answers Rhana Devenport of the Art Gallery of South Australia; "A site for bringing people together around art and artists,"—Koyo Kouoh of Cape Town's Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art; "Democratic spaces to learn, debate and advance social change"—Anne Pasternak, Brooklyn Museum; "A platform for engagement with art"—Max Hollein, New York's Met.

One dialogue, with Axel Rüger of the Royal  Academy, specifically addresses the question of the museum as a business. Rüger came to London after directing the private Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Only 13 per cent of its income is frompublic subsidies—all the rest self- generated, but, as he notes: "Van Gogh is a global rock star. If you can't make money with Van Gogh, you should try a different business." He continues: "Museums are subject to economic realities that are not all that different from the commercial businesses . . . there is an urgent need for [museums] to become more professional." While in Amsterdam, he launched a successful commercial venture, the Meet Vincent van Gogh Experience, an immersive video-based travelling show that appeals to younger audiences—even if it makes traditionalists shudder.

Interestingly, when Szántó asked other directors what models they were looking at, the answers were generally not other museums. Pixar, German car companies and Red Bull were mentioned by Belev, of Moscow's private Garage Museum of Contemporary Art: "I always try to learn how things work outside the museum field . . . When it comes to marketing, I looked at how Red Bull . . .built their brand," he says.

Levine cited Netflix: "People love serialised content; imagine if museums found a way to have each program build off the previous one, and if we figured out a way to distribute that through digital media in a way that was binge-worthy." Eugene Tan of the Singapore  Art Museum suggests crowdfunding and imagines museums with shareholders.

Utopian that may be, but the interviewees had many visions of the future museum. What is sure is that the old model, as a storehouse of artefacts, ispivoting towards a different, and more active role in many of today's issues.Museums in the future will be more fluid, open, inclusive, experiential, and engaged with their community. A museum will become: "a town square", in the words of María Mercedes González of the Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín in Colombia. And, as a result, as Thomas Campbell of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco says: "We have to shed the mindset of colonialism and exploitation."

'The Future of the Museum: 28 Dialogues' by András Szántó is published in Europe by Hatje Cantz and will be available worldwide from January 2021