New Museums and the Making of Culture

Book excerpt: In the last decade, museums all around the world have been reinventing themselves. They are now much more than scholarly, cultural archives. A remit to reach out to a broader public, the increasing politicization of the ownership and curation of objects, the architectural expectations of new buildings, the requirements of the "event exhibit"...all have changed the way any new museum is built, operates and serves its public purpose. Museums now reflect global economics and local politics. New museums now shape our public culture.Illustrated with a very wide range of museums and museum spaces - from MOMA in New York to the reconstruction of Ground Zero, from the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC to the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, from the planned renewal of the Crystal Palace site in London to the Sendai Mediatheque in Japan - the book reveals how the new museum is evolving as a cross-disciplinary, self-consciously political, and often avowedly self-reflexive institution.