Museum Future Predictions
Posted in Design, Individualism, Politics, Presentism, Technology on 12. Dec, 2009
The Centre for the Future of Musuems made five predictions about the museum of the future. They said Green, Personalised, Comfortable, Interactive and Flexible. Read the article to get the explanation of each one (especially “Interactive”. They means something a bit more advanced. I think a better word would have been something from the Nina Simon lexicon “Participatory”)
I pretty much agree with these predictions, so I would like to offer five of my own.
I predict the museum of the future will be:
1) Closed. As in the doors are shut and the staff laid off. Whilst the financial and business world are slowly recalibrating themselves to try to deal with the new systems in places, I imagine there are a great number of museums that just will not have the ability to adapt for whatever reason, or the reasons will be out of their hands.
2) Enslaved. I think this to be the best antonym for autonomous. What I mean is that there will be ever increasing influences or a museum program from outside the museum. Corporate sponsorship of exhibitions, oppressive criteria for funding, government social engineering agendas and media lynch-mobs of ignorance. The actual museum will be very few decision left to make.
3) 3D digital. A more positive one. It only makes sense that the current digitisation projects will move into the next phase and an extra dimension. Considering there are people doing basic 3D scanning using only a webcam and other people doing amazing handheld highly-detailed scanning, museums are going to have to start soon.
Autodesk University 2009: Z Corp from Core77 on Vimeo.
4) Sillier. I agree with the CFM’s statement that future museums will be Flexible, but I feel that’s a statement about requirement rather than actuality. Distributed sites and chameleon spaces are sensible suggestions but urban regeneration through the construction of massive monuments isn’t going to go out of fashion. Well, it’s not as long as our concept of a city doesn’t change too much. As nobody has a set idea about what a museum or art gallery has to look like, they can build ever more bizarre buildings in attempts to be iconic.
5) Curatorless. Celebrity curators (like Shaq rather than Koons) or tyranny-by-majority decision making processes to pick out favourites. I wouldn’t be surprised if the task of curators is outsourced either to voting schemes or freelancers. Those banks sitting on large art collections will probably have more need for curators anyway.
Those are my five. Anyone else want to come up with five of their own?
I agree with all your points. Even though I hope it doesn’t pan out that way. Cool blog.
#2 So true! I consult with one museum in which their own collections languish yet they pimp an exhibit of ludicrously incongruous material (entirely?) on loan from another archive–because its a friend of a trustee/donor.
I hesitate to think how correct you may be on these, particularly #5 – although US News and World Reports apparently thinks there will be 23% (!!!) growth for curators this decade – http://www.usnews.com/money/careers/articles/2009/12/28/curator.html
Maybe somebody at US News just knows a curator and thinks they have a cool job. LOL!
But seriously, I enjoyed these predictions. Like another commenter, I see it as not all happy news.
In the spirits of joining in and self preservation, I’d add 6. Esoteric – there will always be specialists or people who end up being experts from working around the objects that inspired museums of the past. Like a monastery, the future museum will have someone who quietly, secretly looks after the collections and preserves the memory of the institution, its former mission(s), and its service to people.