Response: The White Cube and Beyond
[A response to Niklas Maak, Charlotte Klonk, Thomas Demand, 'The White Cube and Beyond' in Tate Etc. , 21 (Spring 2011), 78-91.] As I said in 15 April's short post concerning the difficulty of defining the museum, the article in this season's Tate Etc. cited above, on the development of the use of museum space, is a great starting-point for someone like me, coming from an informal and more, say, empirical museological background. Perhaps in the end this will read more like a review than a response, or a mixture of the two, so forgive me the terminological inconsistency if this turns out to be the case. Museums are clearly not inert buildings but spaces of experience. Their role as repositories for objects may be an essential one in their broader definition, but it's feasible that an impermanent, even open-air space could be described as a museum, albeit probably be limited in use to temporary and weather-resistant exhibitions. However, their received role...