The museum and the city: Towards a new architectural and museological model for the museum?

Abstract

Against the background of the growing role of museums in urban development, and the expanding urban concerns of city museums, this paper takes the point of view of the architectural, spatial and curatorial design of museums, and suggests that in recent years there have been changes in how museums, especially those involving innovative and experimental designs, relate to the city in these respects. The paper looks in turn at spatial and visual connections between the museum building and the surrounding urban landscape; at the creation, through the design of the museum, of social space and urbanity within or adjacent to it; and at the museum standing in some sense as a symbol for the surrounding city through its building and spatial design. It then shifts attention from the architectural to the curatorial perspective, to look at how museums reconsider the way they present their collections, ‘undermining’ well-established knowledge and interpretations, as a complementary expression of the way they address urban communities. On this basis, the paper asks whether the fact that all these changes point the same way, towards a more intense and open relation between museum and city than has existed in the past, indicates a new emerging model for the museum, the urbanised museum. Such a model, it is suggested, could be theoretically linked to Foucault's concept of the modern episteme.