Serota/MacGregor

The video of Nick Serota and Neil MacGregor at the LSE is up.

They talk UK politics (I agree with Serota about nobody wanting to be Culture Secretary). They talk about geopolitics with MacGregor clearly pushing his internationalism. Interesting he associates it with London as the City of Diasporas. They talk about the Marbles. I like to think my insight was right. The question of ownership is redundant, the question of taking it around the world is more important. They talk about sculpture, the Olympics etc.

Then Bamber Gascoigne makes them take about the future, museums and the Internet. It was Serota’s answer that stood out for me:

The big challenge for big institutions over the next 20 years is going to be to what extent we wish to simply remain authors and to what extent are we going to become publishers?

Boom. Serota shows why he’s one of the most important museum directors in the world. MacGregor spoke about the Internet providing access, which is fair enough. Serota sees the Internet as a medium of information and museums as sources of information. Curators will be far more like Editors (Ahem! Okay, I said magazines, but I think the statements are still relevant). Okay, it may not be what comes out of a MW200x conference, but

It makes me wonder why Jonathon Jones still has a job at The Guardian. I’ve never seen a cultural critic so out of touch.