Museal link

BACK

Museal: in relation to museums

Museality: the museal (relation of works of art)

'The museal function'

The term museal function is frequently used on the continent of Europe (From Sweden to Italy) to describe what idealistically should be the function of a museum (of modern art): the collection, conservation, research and exhibition of art from the (recent) past and the acknowledgement (and standardization of quality) of art through acquisition and exhibition of work from (alive) artists. Furthermore it's considered desirable that the museum of today obtains the responsibility to recognize important developments in contemporary art, to make choices (again: standardization of quality), to stimulate developments and to present (rather than communicate) the results to the public.

A Museum is a Theatre of Time.
A collection of objects, a collective receiver, a historical sender, a stationary institution housing and staging the collection, a professional staff responsible for research on the objects and retrieval of objects according to a selective definition of the collection from reference to historical facts, a strategy of temporary exposition (exhibitions) developed by the same staff. This institutional frame can be considered as a conflict between the hermeneutic dimension (research and interpretation: the objects are signs of some historical facts) and the aesthetic dimension (reception from principles of interest: beauty, enigma, communication, entertainment). And therefore the hermeneutics of things past (opposing communication) meets an aesthetics of things present on the museal location (the stage)
(Derived from: Nordisk Museologi 1995/1: SUMMARY pp. 17-24)

Meanwhile the term museal also became a qualification for the kind of art lending to the sterile, imposing and authoritarian nature of the architecture as well as the cultural circumstances of the institute, which exercises a certain power over the cultural inheritance but also over the development of art. The qualification is conceived both positive (acknowledgement, quality, established) and negative (adaptive, isolated, established).

In common language museal means: 'suitable for the museum' (a museal piece).

BACK