What is the function of the museum in culture today? Leading culture makers offer perspectives for the new era ahead

Gathering together fresh perspectives from more than 25 leading art and museum figures—including artists, architects, curators and museum directors—from all over the world, this collection of interviews and contributions shares idiosyncratic views, feedback and visions of what is and what should or should not be a museum in the 21st century, both inherently and in our fast-changing cultural ecosystem.

Do we need a new art historical canon? How can museums become welcoming places for everybody? How should a museum deal with artworks that are considered problematic today? Is the blockbuster a thing of the past? How can museums be sustainable? These are some of the pressing questions answered very differently by the contributors, together with others dealing with the relationships between the local and the global, the museums’ governance and financial organization, technological possibilities, and audience-related challenges. Showing the diversity of today’s thinking about the museum, this tome constitutes a valuable handbook for navigating an ever-evolving landscape. Edited by Cristina Bechtler and Dora Imhof, the book is introduced by Chris Dercon and concludes with a postface by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Interviewees and contributors include: David Adjaye, Richard Armstrong, Manuel Borja-Villel, Lionel Bovier, Raphael Chikukwa, David Chipperfield, Bice Curiger, Clementine Deliss, Madeleine Grynsztejn, Sabine Haag, Camille Henrot, Jacques Herzog, Josef Helfenstein, Junya Ishigami, Sam Keller, Ramiro Martínez, Sarah Morris, Dimitri Ozerkov, Adriano Pedrosa, Susanne Pfeffer, Manuel Rabaté, Rebecca Rabinow, Pipilotti Rist, Adam Szymczyk and Eugene Tan.