Museum of the Future: Now What?

Visual Aids, 2021, Softcover, 88 pages, 19 × 14 cm

Contributions by Cristina Bechtler, Dora Imhof, Chris Dercon, Hans Ulrich Obrist, David Adjaye (architect, Accra/London/Los Angeles), Richard Armstrong (Guggenheim Museum, New York), Sylvain Bellenger (Museo di Capodimonte, Naples), Manuel Borja-Villel (Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid), Lionel Bovier (MAMCO, Geneva), Raphael Chikukwa (National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare), David Chipperfield (architect, London), Bice Curiger (Fondation Vincent van Gogh, Arles), Clementine Deliss (Kunstwerke, Berlin), Madeleine Grynsztejn (MCA, Chicago), Sabine Haag (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna), Camille Henrot (artist, Paris), Jacques Herzog (architect, Basel), Josef Helfenstein (Kunstmuseum, Basel), Junya Ishigami (architect, Tokyo), Sam Keller (Fondation Beyeler, Basel), Ramiro Martínez Estrada (Museo Amparo, Puebla), Sarah Morris (artist, New York), Dimitri Ozerkov (State Hermitage Museum, St.Petersburg), Adriano Pedrosa (MASP, São Paulo), Susanne Pfeffer (MMK, Frankfurt), Manuel Rabaté (Louvre, Abu Dhabi), Rebecca Rabinow (The Menil Collection, Houston), Pipilotti Rist (artist, Zurich), Adam Szymczyk (Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam), and Eugene Tan (National Gallery, Singapore).

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 21^stcentury, 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.