Are contemporary art museums non-profit institutions? Axioms, paradoxes, and contradictions on the economic role of museums

Abstract

ABSTRACT The museum’s practices, spaces, and goals have evolved significantly in recent decades. Therefore, ICOM created in 2017 a working group commissioned to revise the former definition, established since 1974. In all the proposals one fundamental and unquestioned concept appear: their non-profit dimension. This article tries to analyze some of the contradictions shown by the museum definition and its proposals, focusing mainly on the inconsistencies when contrasted to the economic side of the institutions, more accused in the new generation of urban contemporary art museums. This study provides a comprehensive overview of the previous works that have related contemporary art museum governance and management as actively immersed in a harsh free-market cultural economy related to profit-making initiatives. Assuming that museums have an undeniable variety of roles, the main aim of this paper is to clarify if contemporary art museums can still be defined in those general terms used by ICOM.