From Museum Critique to the Critical Museum

Katarzyna Murawska-Muthesius, Piotr Piotrowski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472422354
• eBook ISBN: 9781317132035
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Museum Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Since the late nineteenth century, museums have been cited as tools of imperialism and colonialism, as strongholds of patriarchalism, masculinism, homophobia and xenophobia, and accused both of elitism and commercialism. But, could the museum absorb and benefit from its critique, turning into a critical museum, into the site of resistance rather than ritual? This book looks at the ways in which the museum could use its collections, its cultural authority, its auratic space and resources to give voice to the underprivileged, and to take an active part in contemporary and at times controversial issues. Drawing together both major museum professionals and academics, it examines the theoretical concept of the critical museum, and uses case studies of engaged art institutions from different parts of the world. It reaches beyond the usual focus on western Europe, America, and 'the World', including voices from, as well as about, eastern European museums, which have rarely been discussed in museum studies books so far.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Frontmatter
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: From Museum Critique to the Critical Museum
• PART I HISTORIES
• 1 A Very Brief History of the Art Museum in the United States (Focusing Mainly But Not Exclusively on the Nineteenth Century)
• 2 ‘The Contemporary Museum is a Laboratory of Knowledge’: The Origins of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Russia
• 3 Wilhelm R. Valentiner’s Reshaping Museums in the Spirit of the New Age (1919) and its Reception
• 4 Myth and Reality of the White Cube
• 5 Jerzy Ludwiński’s Testing of the Dysfunction of the Museum: On the Museum of Current Art in Wrocław (1966)
• PART II TOOLS: OBJECTS, SPACE, VIEWING PRACTICES
• 6 Masterpieces and the Critical Museum
• 7 From the White Cube to a Critical Museography: The Development of Interrogative, Plural and Subjective Museum Discourses
• 8 From the Inside Looking Out: The Possibility of a Critical Establishment
• 9 Making the National Museum Critical
• 10 Historical Space and Critical Museologies: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews
• 11 Museums that Listen and Care? Central Europe and Critical Museum Discourse
• 12 Towards Embodied, Agonistic Museum Viewing Practices in Contemporary Manchester, England
• PART III CRITIQUE
• 13 The Context and Practice of Post-critical Museology
• 14 ‘Is the Contemporary Already Too Late?’ (Re-)producing Criticality within the Art Museum
• 15 Neuromuseology
• Index