Extrovert Interior: Publicness and the Contemporary Museum
A collaboration between ANCB and the Centre for the Future of Places at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. 26th January 2019, Berlin.
Summary:
In the past decade, we have witnessed a radical expansion of the space, remit, and role of the museum as a public institution. This has taken the form of an increasing shift from public space to public programme, from the spatial organisation of artefacts to the temporal organisation of events that places the museum’s activities solidly in line with the production of discourse, atmospheres, experiences, and social networking. These activities, further, are often undertaken outside the actual museum building, in urban space, and may indeed be ‘hosted’ by other places of urban knowledge and cultural production, thus blurring these lines even further.
Could the expansion of the remit of museum practices provide access to other social groups, audiences, and interests, thereby making way for a democratisation of discourse and knowledge? What does this mean in terms of challenging the centrality of the metropolis, the capital city, and the regional centre in relation to the rural? What does it mean in relation to a contemporary understanding of publicness and the role of public space within the city? Finally, what do these processes of dissolution, expansion, withdrawal, and outreach mean for architecture, the discipline traditionally charged with erecting ‘the edifice’ of the museum?