How the director of the Grand Palais invented the museum of the future

Les Echos Newspaper

Appointed last year as head of the Grand Palais to bring a fresh wind of transversality to the building, Chris Dercon, the world-renowned museum manager, is not letting the pandemic demobilise him. On the strength of his experiences at the PS1, the Haus der Kunst and the Tate Modern, he is thinking about the museum of the “after”. And he is determined to triumph over French bureaucratic red tape.

“The art of decompartmentalization”.

A former art critic and gallery owner, Dercon was artistic director at Moma PS1, New York’s avant-garde exhibition space, then at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, the Haus der Kunst in Munich and finally at the Tate Modern in London. He has made Europe his life project. In Parisian circles, his opinions are sometimes greeted like an oracle. Dercon knew few failures, but the one he experienced in Berlin was violently painful: his mission as director of the Volksbühne ended under booing, after three years of a long and tiring dialogue with the theatre’s very anti-capitalist teams and the social-democratic town hall.

Is there a Dercon style?” It’s someone who is not afraid to question the model”, says Sam Stourdze. In the academic world of art, he obviously enjoys playing the dog in a game of bowling. His working method is based on two pillars: an avant-garde vision and the mixing of the arts. When you think you’ve found a rare pearl,” explains Simon Baker, “you realise that he already knows this artist! ». His unusual career has allowed him to meet artists from all walks of life. Connected with fashion, photography and dance, he is constantly making connections. “He has the art of decompartmentalization and decentring,” adds Sam Stourdze. At the risk of exasperating the “cultural” when he mixes pop culture and elite arts.

What does ‘museum’ actually mean? Unusual museums from around the globe

Rebecca Carlsson
Original paper on MuseumNext>

From strange artworks to severed heads, it’s safe to say that the word “museum” is a an umbrella term that can be interpreted in many unique and unorthodox ways.

Most people have an image that comes to mind when they hear the word “museum”, and chances are it’s an image of quiet halls, neatly hung artworks, and artefacts carefully displayed in glass cases.

And while many museums follow this basic blueprint, there are certainly those that choose a different path. In reality, the title of “museum” can refer to a whole host of different spaces and experiences.

With thousands of museums across the globe, each with their own subject matter, items and atmosphere, developing an overarching definition for cultural institutions is almost impossible. To celebrate the diversity of the museum space, we’re going to take a closer look at some of the weirdest and most wonderful museums from around the world.

The Plastinarium – Guben, Germany

Sometimes museums aim to teach us more about the world around us, and sometimes they ask us to look inwards in order to learn something about ourselves. In the case of the Plastinarium, the museum gets us to do this in quite a graphic way.

© MuseumNext

After nearly four decades of studying medicine and dissection, Gunther von Hagens perfected the controversial process of plastination, in which polymers are used to preserve human tissue. Visitors to the Plastinarium can see the results of this process, receiving a graphic lesson in anatomy by viewing humans and animals in creative poses.

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Natural History Museum Reaches Millions with TikTok

Jim Richardson
Original paper on MuseumNext>

When you think of the latest innovations that are allowing museums around the world to reach new audiences, perhaps snail jokes aren’t top of your list. But a museum in Pittsburgh has proved that a simple idea well executed can win over a new generation of fans.

Carnegie Museum of Natural History has attracted millions views of films of Tim Pearce, a curator at the museum telling snail jokes on the video-sharing social networking website TikTok.

The app is popular with 13-21 year old’s, with over 1 billion people downloading it. That makes it bigger than Instagram.

The content is mainly around dancing, singing and lip synching to music, movies or sound bites. Users create short looped videos, then have the option of adding music and Snapchat style stickers or filters. While hashtags make the content searchable.

The fun content makes it appeal to teenagers. And it would seem that teenagers like snails.

Carnegie Museum of Natural History have posted 12 films on TikTok, with the most viewed attracting over 1.5 million views. That’s more people than visited all four institutions in the Carnegie Museums Of Pittsburgh group last year.

6 of the weirdest (and most wonderful) museum marketing campaigns you’ll ever see

Manuel Charr
Original paper on MuseumNext>

Art is known for pushing the boundaries in a number of different ways. But what happens when museums carry this mindset over into their marketing campaigns?

© Tate Britain museum

One of the biggest challenges facing any museum is fighting against the preconceived notion that museums are “boring”. The cliched museum is a silent, intimidating space that doesn’t offer much in the way of fun, and while many museums successfully break this mould, the stereotype still exists for many people.

To cut through the stigma and entice new, diverse audiences, it is important for institutions to carefully consider how they develop and deliver bold, powerful marketing campaigns. And while not every campaign idea that involves “blue sky thinking” is worth implementing, there are certainly some quirky and off the wall ideas that retain a special place in our hearts.

I want to take a look at some of my favourite museum campaigns that fall firmly outside the box, in order to show just how impactful the right kind of marketing can be. Let’s take a look.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vlUiwDiSzw&feature=emb_logo

Muses Ltd

https//:muze.hr

Everything that we have done so far, what we are doing and what we will do for us is always emotively charged, because heritage without feeling is inconceivable. We are committed to delivering heritage messages to every visitor, because we deeply believe that heritage with its messages can make the world a better place to live for us and generations to come.

We work in the areas of heritage interpretation, (eco) museology and heritology, heritage management and sustainable cultural tourism, combining them with creativity, innovation and multidisciplinary teamwork.

Our greatest achievement is to develop successful, sustainable and outstanding cultural and natural heritage interpretation projects whose main focus is a participatory approach and stakeholder engagement in local communities and their well-being.

Receiving and sharing knowledge is our greatest passion. Collaborating with local communities that come together to celebrate their heritage is our calling. Innovation and social responsibility are our beacons.

Muses Ltd (Muze) was founded in 2005 and since then it has become one of the leading companies for consulting and management in culture and tourism in Croatia and surrounding countries.

Products and services:

  • Interpretation planning
  • Conceptual and construction planning of museum exhibitions
  • Content development and production
  • Museum planning and production
  • Strategic planning of cultural tourism destinations and attractions
  • Audience development planning
  • Fundraising planning and management
  • Blended learning trainings in heritage interpretation and heritage management

SAVVYZΛΛR // “When Does Time Start?”

with K.Metwaly, K.Krugman, A.Ndakoze and L.Balatbat // 26.06.2020

© SAVVY Contemporary

There was this moment: moment again. I left it there, on a warm night moving with my heartbeat. Going in cycles, as the travel of the earth around the soon. I meant moon. Did I? When did I sense that again, am I sensing it, or do you: the cosmos walking me?
WHEN DOES TIME START? A conversation between the SAVVYZAAR Team (Kamila Metwaly, Kelly Krugman, Arlette-Louise Ndakoze) & Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock

Wow Museum Zürich

www.wow-museum.ch

Welcome to the rooms of illusions

Come be amazed by our rooms which are full of surprising illusions and new perspectives! WOW combines fun with learning, culture and virtuality.

Across three floors and more than 400 square meters you will lose yourself in infinity, stand upside down and wonder about your own perception.

© Wom museum

Can you even believe your eyes?

In the WOW museum, nothing is as it seems.

Be inspired and amazed that there is no right or wrong and that everyone sees things differently.

Be invited to cherish your illusions! We make room for it!

Come and dive into the WOW Experience – A museum has never been so much fun!

© Wom museum

Article on the newspaper Le Temps

Museums must become the better Netflix

ZKM-Direktor Peter Weibel
Monopol, Magazin für Kunst und Leben

The Corona pandemic has driven art into the digital realm – curator Peter Weibel was already there. Here the ZKM director explains why virtual events dominate reality – and why proximity in the museum is a fiction that is now coming to an end.

Mr Weibel, you curate the Karlsruhe Schlosslichtspiele, among others. How do reality and digital art interact?

The castle light show is a highly technical event. With “Projection Mapping”, images are not simply projected onto a cinema screen. Instead, each group of artists receives a computer-based 3D model of the castle and is then commissioned to incorporate the architecture of the facade into the images. This means that every pixel of the façade becomes part of a composition and is transformed by it. The façade moves, it can collapse or become a waterfall with water coming out of the windows. Through a projected fantasy world one can let the real one sink, so to speak. In the case of the castle light games, one can already see a dominance of the virtual, but the real façade still needs this as a carrier medium.