Rethinking the role of the museum today

Following and completing the acclaimed publications Museum of the Future (2014) and The Private Museum of the Future (2018), this new volume proposes a global mapping of museological thinking in our unprecedented times to respond to the need to rethink and reassess the role and place of the museum today.

Gathering together fresh perspectives from 28 leading art and museum figures—including artists, architects, curators, and museum directors—from all over the world, this collection of interviews and contributions shares idiosyncratic views, feedback, and visions of what is and what should or should not be a museum in the 21stcentury, both inherently and in our fast-changing cultural ecosystem. Do we need a new art historical canon? How can museums become welcoming places for everybody? How should a museum deal with artworks that are considered problematic today? Is the blockbuster a thing of the past? How can museums be sustainable? These are some of the pressing questions answered very differently by the contributors, together with others dealing with the relationships between the local and the global, the museums’ governance and financial organization, technological possibilities, and audience-related challenges. Showing the diversity of today’s thinking about the museum, this tome constitutes a valuable handbook to navigate its ever-evolving landscape.