The Changing Role of Art Museums

Pipilotti Rist at The Museum of Modern Art. Photo: Anne Helmond.

Beyond exhibition and education, the role of the art museum is to build a seminal collection worthy of study and conservation. However, recent declines in funding and attendance set arts administrators on edge. They fear museums are not communicating with the public and losing audience-base. Historian Thomas Crow observes in The Intelligence of Art that the ascension of art tells of a catastrophic conclusion where society no longer endures it, asking why we are in this current state. He suggests that, to make art history accessible, a new approach is necessary to relate the present to the past. Getting beyond the reductive inclination of examination is the first step to understanding art, and change is not accounted for by anxiety and tumultuousness. Just as art history is confronted with this challenge, art museums must also respond to the sea of change.

In light of this dilemma, there are two significant considerations. Institutions must first engage audiences with a whole new experience, reshaping themselves into places of visual and sensory experience. Linda Duke, Director of Audience Engagement at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, believes “A museum visit isn’t a lesson, it’s an experience.” Art history offers critical and scholarly understanding, but providing this information doesn’t motivate an emotional response in the ‘novice viewer.’ Exhibitions aren’t just about chronology, geographic locations, and movements. Museums must broaden the viewer’s expectations and spectrum of perception through a holistic approach. For example, PBS’s television series Art21 sets the pulse for behind-the-scenes access to contemporary art practices. Museums have the potential to provide this type of insight with artist-in-residence programs and incorporating the strategies of alternative art spaces. Granting visitors a glimpse into the creative process instills meaningful relationships with art objects.

Second, it’s vital for museums to adapt to changing technology by expanding the art-historical canon to include new media art. Since the 1960s, rapid technological advances have allowed for an influx of digital and interactive media. Today artists such as Natalie Jeremijenko, Patricia Piccinini, and Eduardo Kac utilize new media to question and explore cultural implications of science and technology. Embracing this emerging art form can provide valuable admittance to the art of today through examination of relationships between art and society. Work of this nature is often reliant on viewer participation, encouraging intuitive and reciprocal exchanges—enhancing the viewer’s overall experience.

Museums cannot be one-sided institutions; sustainability is dependent upon responding to shifting trends. They can harness ‘new media’ through integrating portable devices into exhibitions, adding virtual galleries to augment collections, presenting symposiums and workshops, filming events, and, most importantly, communicating what the museum is doing. As cultural institutions, they have the potential to transcend traditional roles of preservation, conservation, and education—to function as a third place. Playing an active role in building the community can simply be giving visitors free Wi-Fi access or incorporating a coffee shop and library. Museums of the future must be innovative, multidimensional, and active.

Free Wi-Fi at MoMA. Photo: Anne Helmond.

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