Where do we go from here? On the future of museums, Contemporary Lynx

Regardless of where you live, and how comfortable you feel in public spaces in a (post) pandemic world, chances are you’ve not visited many museums in the past couple of years. Perhaps you’ve heard about the widespread redundancies, or looked around a digital show. COVID-19 temporarily halted cultural operations, then morphed and forced them online, to now re-emerge in the physical world once again. But has anything changed? Has this pause really been the chance to reassess the role that museums play in our lives and act on it, or are cultural hubs keen to get back to the version of ‘normal’ from 2018? 

Battling for relevance

It seems that the biggest lesson from the pandemic struggles was a sad realisation that the culture sector could no longer battle against - museums are not seen as essential in the life of the everyday citizen. Exalted statements about educational value amounted to very little when decisions were made about closures, declaring to society that rather than indispensable, museum visits are a luxury. 

András Szántó, author of ‘The Future of Museums’ in which he talked to 28 museum leaders around the world concludes that “On a tactical level, museums need to advocate more effectively for their own relevance, not only in lofty rhetoric but in the language of facts.”  Szántó rightly points out that if airlines can use numerical data to back up their pleas for increased financial support, why can’t museums? Even more so than finances, what suffers is the image of the museum in the public mind: “people need to be convinced that the museum is not trying to lecture them or make them feel culturally ill-equipped, but to warmly welcome them and offer meaningful experiences that are fundamental to their lives.” In the not-so-distant past you could find similar proclamations in museum reports on an annual basis, but this time the stakes are higher. If the unimaginable has happened once, it could happen again. This time the preparation in the form of real-life engagement with existing and potential audiences must be made a reality - but more on that further down.

Digital appeal

Dubai’s Museum of the Future will be a meeting point for art, technology, science and theatre, optimistically inviting us to “look beyond the present to the possible” and despite not being open to the public yet, it boasts about the ambition to “act as an accelerator program for technological achievements in the key fields of healthcare, climate change, and food security.” Its oblong shape draws the eye and the claims about its sustainability, from the construction to the exhibits, fill the heart. Yet, it’s hard to tell how the actual Museum of the Future will operate, at least until it opens. One thing is for sure - while steeped in technology, it has a brand new, breathtaking building. But are grand architectural miracles passé now, in the increasingly digital world? 

Throughout the pandemic we’ve seen museum after museum scrambling to establish online infrastructures to enable them to present at least a fraction of the planned activities. For the more traditional institutions, this resulted in a flood of digital showrooms displaying high-res photographs of their artefacts, while smaller organisations specialising in new media thrived on the hunger to experience culture from the comfort of the sofa. This change in approach was a long time coming and it took a public health catastrophe to employ technologies which have finally allowed disabled viewers to fully participate in the cultural sphere. While this attention to digital detail should remain, museums must not rest on their laurels regarding accessibility - physical inclusivity is just as important online as it is in its tangible form and must be part of their future. Despite a reasonably successful process of online adaptation and the undisputable need for high-quality online presence, it must also be said that viewers “want to be in museum spaces, because it’s so different to their everyday surroundings”. Museum trips are events - they may be educational, entertaining, relaxing or ridiculous but always worth the trip, and it's unlikely that the majority of museums’ activity will take place online in the future.

Potential in disintegration

It is not just museum staff that are thinking about their institutions' future - artists have taken to the topic too, albeit in more extreme ways. Diana Lelonek’s 2021 exhibition ‘Kompost’ at Arsenal Gallery in Bialystok reveals the most extreme vision of the future of the cultural institution - a decline into gradual disintegration, with the staff crawling out of derelict buildings that have submitted to ferociously growing vegetation. The artist is thinking about the notion of an impending catastrophe in general as a key point in the future of culture and uses speculation as a tool to predict the most dystopian conclusion. While it may seem like science fiction, the idea of using museum buildings to house climate refugees may be closer to reality than we’d ever like to admit. Interestingly, ‘Kompost’ opened while the gallery was still closed to the public, and given that it consisted of a physical, immersive installation of organic matter filling the gallery and screens playing Lelonek’s videos peeking out of the undergrowth, it was an exhibition that could not really be experienced online. It may have forecasted the decline of the physical museum but it could not have done without it. So, perhaps the question we should be asking is not whether museums should go digital but whether they need more buildings and the inevitable gentrification that follows the opening of a museum. 

In a recent panel discussion organised by the Łódź Museum of Art on the topic of ‘The museum and the city’, the answer to this question came in the form of the realisation that a successful museum is made up of people who want to develop the organisation. This is what makes up their true cultural capital capable of successful engagement which is the top priority of the future museum, not another glass cube. It’s an aspect that also touches on the sustainability of the museum: in the words of Diana Lelonek, a truly ecological institution is not only one that will limit their plastic use and recycle the objects sitting in their basements, but one that also focuses on building genuine relationships and cares for its employees. 

Decolonise now

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, decolonising the museum became a priority in the Western world and accelerated talks about reparations, at least on paper. “For centuries European imperialism has become manifest in biases around whom we employ, how we employ and what we curate.” Decolonisation is not just about identifying and returning objects which make up the collection as a result of imperialist rule - it’s a complex process that requires constant dialogue. It is not a tick box exercise: from employing more diverse teams, through the choice of words and languages for wall text, to co-creating exhibition programmes with the communities in question, even as far as “intentionally embracing an alternative condition in which [museums] do not exist or have been replaced by another institution entirely” in response to the needs of their communities. “If museums want to continue to have a place, they must stop seeing activists as antagonists. They must position themselves as learning communities, not impenetrable centers of self-validating authority.” The future of museums and their validity depends in large part on how they handle this challenge - ignoring it will undermine their cultural value and significantly limit potential for development. Audiences can no longer be fooled into obedience. If Western institutions do not own up to their past, they may as well openly state that acting in the viewers’, artists’ and staff’s best interests is just not part of the agenda.

Sharing is caring

Interestingly, outside of the Western world, younger museums also have other concerns. During the UNESCO panel discussion on the future of museums comprised of many leaders of the largest institutions in the world, Hamady Bocoum, director of the recently opened Museum of Black Civilisations in Senegal, reminded the viewers that “We have to stop seeing African people as only interested in ethnology, as they are very open and hungry for learning about other cultures. We want to know you as much as you want to know us.” The discussion’s conclusion was a call for unity and collaboration, encouraging organisations to continue sharing knowledge as well as collections. Bocoum mentioned the popularity of a recent Leonardo DaVinci exhibition, which young people would often visit once, and then again with their families, who perhaps would not have had a chance to visit a museum before. A future Picasso exhibition is also in the museum’s plans, highlighting the need to open up to the world and not fall into the trap of a solely Western, singular perspective to consider the specific issues facing cultural institutions all around the world. 

Shut up and listen

In the ongoing debates about the future of museums, there is one word which reappears every single time: listening. Listening to the local community, the museum staff, the audiences visiting the museums, young people, minority groups and the artists themselves. Absolutely every single conversation concludes with this urgent need to hear the voices of others, ideally louder than the museum bosses. As Zofia Nierodzińska, vice president of the Arsenal Gallery in Poznan says, the museum must be “a place of openness that unseals itself” in order to absorb feedback.

“You see it with educational departments over the past twenty years, and the sort of agency they have been given. Now that agency needs to extend further into the public.” Education departments of museums are often cited as most effectively carrying out the organisation’s manifestos, and while not at the forefront, they quietly continue their engagement activities and this is the direction that museum programming must go in. The rates of cultural engagement success vary, yet rather than serving up a finished exhibition and expecting non-responsive visitors these activities aim to open up the dialogue and listen to audiences from a cross-section of the society, often from the local community. 

Becoming a neighbourhood ally isn't an impossible dream either, it is already being done. The Queens Museum in New York serves a multicultural community that has both an impressive collection of art and even more impressive visitor engagement. The Museum even made the decision to drop the words ‘of Art’ from its name in order to encourage a local, rather than global audience to visit and the focus on their immediate community and educational programming is a top priority everywhere on the museum’s website.

Hamady Boccum mentioned the role of museum mediators (guides) in offering up a space to listen - the Senegalese Museum of Black Civilisations has recently had visitors who would bring in valuable information about artefacts that had little to no provenance before, such as “My grandfather made this bed”. With this example Boccum underlined the importance of the museum staff being prepared to listen and ask questions themselves, rather than act from the standpoint of the omniscient cultural behemoth. 

The museum of the future is unlikely to use a hologram instead of bricks and mortar, and no matter how immersive the website experience is, it will not compete with Netflix. What museums do need however, is to listen to us - the people who visit them, work for them, and live nearby. The only way to make their cultural activity indispensable in the life of their audiences, is to keep their ear to the ground and hear the rumbles of change.