Rethinking the museum to answer the questions of the present

To begin deconstructing a narrative, we have to start from a fundamental question: why the museum? The museum is a powerful tool in the hands of society, and its mission is a single one: to open up discussion and dialogue, if not actual change, by offering itself as a space where the dominant narrative can be given new meaning.

The museum is both a subject and an apparatus of power and knowledge, able to weave relationships with and between things; a place where spaces and
representations are built, a place of education and of conflict - in short, a highly performative place (Grechi 2021, 27).

In this sense, it keeps pace with society and becomes its critical mirror: today, in fact, any initiative, place or exhibition project - or at least any devoted to passing art on to people - belongs to society, or is expected to.

Nothing should be limited to the passive act of displaying, conserving and protecting: the museum is an actor that takes part in creating the cultural heritage of communities (Pinna 2020, 421).

Museums are, in fact, genuine centres of scientific and cultural production. The objects they hold are not simply preserved, but selected, analysed and placed in precise contexts of time and space, becoming part of historical, artistic or scientific discourses.

By their very nature, these exhibition spaces cannot be neutral institutions, because they carry out a series of actions and communicate to their audience an extremely subjective view of the world, of history and of the society that created them.
Nor can they be considered mere containers, since they are treasure chests of objects representing the past, the history, the culture and the identity of communities: in other words, it is their job to interpret what they hold and to spread the results of their interpretation through society.

An often underestimated aspect is the transformation objects undergo inside the exhibition space. Once placed in a museum, they tend to lose their historical and relational dimension and become fetishes: isolated elements, frozen in time and loaded with exaggerated attention, a true expression of the perspectives of supremacy built into the nature of a given museum.

What is shown to the public is always an angled view of reality or history, sometimes built unconsciously, but often serving specific interests that steer how reality is interpreted. For these reasons, the museum should not present itself as a conservative institution unable to question its own present and future. On the contrary, it is one of the starting points of social change, a collective expression that discusses and reflects shared values. This is what Jean-Loup Amselle calls a real obligation to be contemporary (Amselle 2017, 31): every museum should be able to answer the questions of the present, rather than merely storing and displaying objects.
This principle applies to historical museums as much as to museums of contemporary art.

The Louvre, in particular, is an emblematic case: a temple of Western artistic heritage, from ancient Egypt to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European art, it has tried to “make itself contemporary” through architectural and curatorial interventions, such as the addition of I. M. Pei’s pyramid and the opening of the Pavillon des Sessions, devoted to so-called “other cultures”. However, this operation has produced an aestheticising kind of contemporaneity, in which the exotic is assimilated into the canons of the Western masterpiece and measured against parameters already established, like those embodied by the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo or the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

In this case, rather than a real transformation of museum practice, we see a symbolic reorganisation that does not question the “museum object” as such.
If everything is turned into a museum piece, preserved and stripped of its historicity, what role can the museum play in a world where entire cities are becoming permanent exhibition spaces, geared mainly to mass tourism? The potential of these institutions often ends up being converted into assets to be exploited and brands to be sold, sacrificing the future to the present. In this logic, artistic and cultural productions too risk being reduced to mere goods.

As a result, museums tend to prioritise reaching an ever wider, more generalist audience, while their original public mission is gradually emptied of meaning. Creating communities able to share knowledge and intellectual and aesthetic experiences, and to develop imagination and critical thinking, becomes a secondary goal, simplified and scaled down.

A central question then arises: how can a museum answer the questions of the present without being merely a container of objects? Through what experiments with museum devices and practices can we identify new criteria and approaches to ensure a museum that is representative and accessible, essential in its public role within society?

The museum itself should stage its own anthropophagic drive, offering itself as an edible body, reflexively exposing
its own vulnerability and ambiguities, inviting visitors to imagine a more carnal way of
entering it, of literally incorporating it, calling on a broader sensoriality than one centred on sight alone (Grechi 2021,
122).

Rethinking the museum means starting to see it as a space inhabited by meanings in constant dialogue with the context that produced them. Although many museums are still elitist treasure chests, unable to communicate with contemporary society, signs of openness are emerging: some spaces are turning into forums, places of discussion and active participation. The museum can then be thought of as a living organism, able to speak the language of its time and to transform itself through its encounter with the public.

In this scenario, participation is not superficial involvement, but an immersion that accompanies the shift from the centrality of the collection to the centrality of the narrative (Grechi 2021, 178). It thus becomes essential to ask how contemporary artistic practices can develop beyond the goal of a final exhibition or the rehanging of collections, and how more open exhibition models can help us understand and discuss the present.

To start this process, we need to dismantle the frames that have built up around the museum over time and rethink it as a machine of cultural heritage that raises questions about unresolved, repressed or ignored histories and that, in its most evolved form, should be able to negotiate and imagine possible futures.

As a narrative space, the museum offers reflections through objects and stories, but above all it is a place of questioning. Here visitors are asked to step out of their comfort zone, to engage with multiple perspectives and different languages, setting off a process of re-mediation that turns the whole into an open, dynamic laboratory. Themes are not presented as definitive content but as materials open to shared creation.

The museum should thus become the space where individuals can grow culturally and help build societies that are more open, fluid and aware. From its very origins, the mandate of museums has been to claim a better world than the one they received: a world founded on ecological sustainability, free access to knowledge, common resources and equality among all living beings, including those who have no voice.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Amselle J.L., Il museo in scena. L’alterità culturale e la sua rappresentazione negli spazi espositivi, Meltemi, Milan, 2017
• Grechi G., Decolonizzare il museo. Mostrazioni, pratiche artistiche, sguardi incarnati, Mimesis Edizioni, Sesto San Giovanni, 2021
  - Pinna G., Divagazioni sulla storia politica dei musei, 2019-2020