Beyond the Modern Museum. A theoretical framework for a museal landscape analysis

Abstract

Today museum studies have a duty to keep pace with the museum’s perpetual renewal. This paper, then, aims to outline a new research path in order to grasp what are today the most significant categories and features of the contemporary museum. This will be done by bringing together the contributions of two disciplines so close to each other in subject and purpose, yet still so far apart in the academic discourse, namely museology and the sociology of art. Through the intertwining of theories and concepts of social aesthetics, the systemic approach, and new and post-critical museology, an attempt is made to develop a new research programme to observe museal landscapes. This will be applied to the city of Naples, in the belief that, while it is true that every community is in a class by itself, and therefore cannot be generalized, this is not true of this method which, on the contrary, could be fruitfully applied to a wide number of contexts.