17 Mai Spike Art #75
The Museum Issue
“Closed due to colonialism, elitism, and a private dinner”
This killer subtitle of the museum issue of Spike Art Magazine alone makes us want to drop everything and take a very long, extended bathroom break with this magazine.
But while Spike takes on the current discussion about colonialism and elitism that is rightly being had about museums, they are also writing a love letter to these very institutions. They believe that the museum is at a turning point.
For Spike magazine, it is either dawn or dusk for the museum. If it’s dawn, it could be the beginning of a new chapter, a chapter where the museum takes all the criticism and evolves into something new. But if the semi-darkness the museum is in right now is actually the dusk, then this issue is its eulogy.
“You can be a museum,” Gertrude Stein told MoMA’s founding director, “or you can be modern, but you can’t be both.”