What is a museum for?

Abstract

The museum institution, despite the drastic changes that happened in its understanding over the centuries, was always directly connected with the concept of archivization. The following work is an attempt to draw attention that this tendency has significant negative aspects related to a particular model of thinking about the concept of a contemporary art museum. It aims to be understood as a manifesto; an architectural provocation that questions the existing guidelines in thinking about the institutions that focus on art of today. Although, it is not a criticism of a concept of archive itself, it tries to point out substantial democratic values that seem to be lost due to the above tendency. Due to the Derridian theory of deconstructivism, the human endeavour to archive is extensively rooted into our existence. It is an artificial attempt to tame a fear of loss, a civilizational mechanism to preserve the presence and a cultural product aimed to create the collective memory. Although, over the course of ages the ethicality of archivization was not a subject of question, nowadays it is evident that this matter is inextricably connected with politics and social conditions. Understanding the role that the archive plays in creating a historical context and that it provides an effective reference point for the work of both artists and art historians, the thesis challenges the global practice of understanding museums as institutions primarily storing the past. Taking as its subject the relatively young institution of the Flemish Museum of Contemporary Art, the work suggests a new conception of the archive as a place that is primarily a transcript of contemporary trends in art. Simultaneously, following the anti-museum theory, it proposes a new vision for the museum as an open habitat, an organic catalyst of the present and a transparent institution that brings together both resident artists and the international community.