Contemporary challenges

Growing in tandem with the increased interest in and increasing number of museums of modern and contemporary art is the number of challenges facing such institutions. For example, to what extent is it practical or even desirable to present a coherent overview of a tradition or an era whose history is not yet fully developed or understood? Is it really possible to relate the most recently made art to works now more than a hundred years old? Does it still make sense to divide an institution’s collections by medium? How should Western museums deal with art from Latin America, Asia, or the Middle East, where terms such as progressive or avant-garde might have very different meanings? Is there something distinct and unique about the impact of globalization and the explosion of interest in contemporary art that changes what a museum of modern art should be?

There are no easy answers to these questions, and museums of modern art must constantly grapple with how to remain “disruptive” and new while becoming increasingly part of an established order or accepted canon. How can they balance, for instance, their commitment to new and progressive art while simultaneously collecting and displaying works by such artists as Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh, and Paul Cézanne, whose still wildly popular works were radical and progressive when they were made but are now well over a century old? Some institutions, like MoMA, have endeavoured to engage with this challenge by imagining the collection as “metabolic” (to use Barr’s word) and constantly evolving, but it has proved problematic, and at times contentious, to shed works of art that have become recognized masterpieces in favour of the new and not yet fully appreciated. More productively, many museums are experimenting with different ways of presenting their collections, whether through refreshed historical narratives, through new thematic investigations, or by periodic rehangings designed to explore modern and contemporary art from particular perspectives, such as those of gender and identity. To the degree that a museum of modern art implies a dedication to art whose history is not yet fixed, or fully fixed, any attempt to articulate a cohesive and concise narrative about such work is more likely to be provisional than definitive.

One of the most pressing issues for museums of modern art is how to contend with the growth in, and changing nature of, their audiences. Of special concern is the impact of the Internet, given its ability to engage large numbers of art lovers who may never physically visit a museum. This circumstance requires a reconceptualization of both the intellectual and the physical space of a museum. While museums of modern art are committed first and foremost to the artists and works of art they collect and display, the need to engage the public has become an increasingly important aspect of their efforts. Museum space in this context is not simply artistic or intellectual but also social. It encompasses a complex nexus of relationships between viewers and art objects and between viewers and other viewers. What once was an intimate experience shared by a relatively small number of people from similar social and intellectual backgrounds has become a hugely popular experience shared by many people from far more diverse backgrounds. Some critics have seen this explosion of attendance as a detriment to the visitor’s ability to engage directly with discrete objects, thereby undermining the importance of the institution; others have seen this as a fulfillment of modern art’s democratic and populist impulses. Whatever one’s perspective, the idea of the museum as a laboratory must include the notion of the museum as a crucible of experience in both the real world of the physical museum and the virtual world of the Internet that can engage audiences with the most daring and significant works of the day.