An activity. A museum is not the building, not even its collection, although their works are the DNA of many museums, a museum is but an activity for citizens, which can be done anywhere.
Vicente Todoli, ex-director of the Tate Modern
Vicent Todolí dropped this claim in an interview in La Contra, on La Vanguardia newspaper on November 5. (In Spanish).
Only two things to note:
"It is an activity for the citizens"
"Can be anywhere"
I find it very revealing. I think it also confirms the evolution of cultural centers towards centers of activity, of processes. The work of Co-Creating Cultures is also this: to take an active co-creation approach to the cultural sector, to do research an try how to create cultures that have co-creation as something inherent to them. The world of cultural institutions is a huge field to experiment with open approaches.
One of the great pleasant surprises of the various cultural prototyping workshops we carry out both in Barcelona and other places is the great willingness of participants to try new, more participatory, forms of relationship with the public.
Many of the proposals of the participants in these workshops exploited the "anywhere" side: from plays in private homes, to collaborative artwork in public squares.
It would be too much to ask Todolí to say something like:
"It is an activity OF the citizens "
or
"It is an activity WITH the citizens"
or
"It is an activity BY the citizens"
That a former director of a behemoth as prestigious as the Tate manages to say what he said, stressing the evolution towards the process-centric institutions, far from the collection-based passive, and merely contemplative museums, however, is an important move.
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