ArtReview's feature 'The Museum in Crisis' presents a critical diagnosis of contemporary museums, questioning their foundational authority, purpose, and relevance. The article compiles perspectives from professionals, highlighting challenges like restitution claims, alienated audiences, and the need to dismantle colonial hierarchies embedded in language and display practices. It argues that museums must move beyond being mere preservers to become active producers of public knowledge.
The article matters because it frames the current institutional precarity not as a failure, but as a necessary and generative crisis. It asserts that future museums must embrace multiplicity, friction, and unsettling conversations over becoming commercialized leisure spaces. The core argument is that museums must prioritize reckoning with difficult histories, challenging power systems, and creating space for previously denied voices and knowledge systems to truly fulfill their public role.