The Virtual Museum, For a Radical Mutation
interview of Frédéric Migayrou by Beatriz Sánchez Santidrián
The health crisis, lockdowns and restrictions have forced museums to adapt, accelerating fundamental reappraisals. The development of digital approaches has led to a reconstruction of the general offer of these institutions, and a rethinking of their relationship with the public. Frédéric Migayrou, chief curator of architecture and design, and deputy director of the Mnam—CCI Centre Pompidou, discusses his vision of a new model: the virtual museum.
How will the pandemic and the new health measures change the public’s experience? Obviously, the way people visit museums has been modified. And the number of visitors has fallen sharply. But that’s the short-term effect. The real question is that most of the big museums are mass museums, and the problem is to know if this logic is still viable in the long term. We’ll have to reinvent the notion of exhibition and presentation of works. And above all, create what I would call a “pervasive” museum.
A pervasive museum? A museum with a much more structured use of the collection, communication logic and online access. It’s the virtual offer that should compensate for
Beeple. « Everydays: The First 5,000 Days ». 2021. L´art numérique montre comment la dématérialisation de l’oeuvre amène à sa « réauratisation » et à l’augmentation de son capital symbolique / Digital art shows how the dematerialization of the work leads to its “reauratization” and to the increase of its symbolic capital. the logic of the traditional visit. Museums won’t only present their works, but also lectures, shows, ways of visiting and critical analyses: not simply a question of producing monographic or thematic exhibitions, but critical exhibitions, with the possibility of more direct access to the works. We could imagine some of this online access being free, but also a subscription system for specific audiences, as in museums, to facilitate a different, privileged approach to the works. This doesn’t prevent the traditional visit, the walk, which appeared in the 18th century. It’s simply a question of reconstructing the general cultural offer of the museum.
PERMEABLE MUSEUM
What other applications would this new museum model have? One could imagine online curating of exhibitions with participation by the public, a more active position of researchers in the museum, and an approach to the discourse of the restoration of works. Also a wider access to museum documentation, employed to be open to discussion through debates. In short, there could be a wider critical participation of the public, which would no longer be an anonymous tourist public, but increasingly qualified.This would be an opportunity to provide the museum with a production and distribution platform, and to organise critical platforms, as on television, with a filming system and a team of curators open to cultural mediation. The event aspect should be managed exactly like one of the media. Museums equipped in this way could interact, and this networking between large international museums would herald the end of the tourist exploitation model of the museum. Either we continue the expansion of museums, or we give the museum other functions than a simple para-tourist role, to make them true cultural institutions.
Could you elaborate on the notion of a museum open to digital technology? The idea is to make the museum permeable to the circulation of information, to use technology so that the museum becomes an integrated media phenomenon. The Centre Pompidou was, at its origin in 1977, a media structure: by creating the Bibliothèque Publique d’Information [Public Information Library], it changed the public’s relationship to information. Even if at the time it was on paper, it introduced the idea of navigation that prefigured the internet. Like the Centre Pompidou, which was innovative in 1977, museums should take the risk of opening up to new digital offers.
You mentioned preserving the traditional visit-walk in museums... but will today’s predefined and signposted itineraries exhaust the viewer’s freedom of vision? There’s a virtual museum project to be created where the organisation of the spaces would allow us to wander around, but in a different way, where the digital architecture would be transformed according to the amount of information around the works. In the infinite museum projects imagined by Le Corbusier and Frederick Kiesler, the stocks of information (the collections) could grow constantly, and the architecture could
adapt to them. This can be done now, since the virtual field makes it possible to enter an almost infinite museum. All this doesn’t preempt the question of rights.
DATA BANK
Copyrights are a problem. We need to invent legal systems of exploitation adapted to the new digital conditions, and tools adapted to the dissemination of collections and their data. We shouldn’t be satisfied with the accumulation and numbering of works, but increase the symbolic capital of the museum, its informative capital: the museum transformed into a data bank. The collection is online, but not completely usable because there are works that nobody ever goes to see. What makes a masterpiece a masterpiece? The amount of information it builds. Visibility is the mass of information around the work.This strategy of reconstructing information around the symbolic capital is the challenge for a museum that wants to grow, and more important than the architectural challenge. Nowadays we build a lot of empty museums.
The tough competition in the culture industry in recent years has meant that museums base their success on visitor numbers. Hence the blockbuster exhibitions and the big names to attract the audiences that used to crowd the halls. But long queues are a thing of the past. How will this affect the economy of museums? The museum economy is based on ticketing, with public subsidies and private partnerships. The question is: can we invent, through digital technology, other economies? The example is in the university: online teaching is capable of generating more resources than face-to-face teaching. It’ll be the same for the museum. With digital technology we can imagine prices that are ten times lower, but that reach a considerable audience. On condition that the digital cultural offer is extremely rich and structured.
Do you think that this provides a new opportunity for less commercial, more committed, critical exhibitions? This is what will happen. If online access becomes widespread, with an extremely rich service offer, the obsession with seeing the masterpiece will diminish. The pervasive museum will make it possible to enrich the logic of visits and reach other types of visitors. There’s an educational and training aspect: we can help the visitor to construct his or her visits, and based on this digital cultural offer, enrich the physical visit to the museum.
ENGAGING THE PUBLIC
Is the Centre Pompidou ready for this approach? During the first lockdown, the Centre Pompidou produced a programme around Miró’s three Blues. This is good, and we could develop this programme for the entire collection. But in a virtual visit, as in a guided tour, you don’t know if the person is learning anything.There’s no participation of the visitor, they remain passive. The idea is to get the public more and more involved, so they can build their own path. These virtual tours are a good idea, but they’re only the first step towards an autonomous visit of the visitor to the museum.
How does the pandemic affect the network of artists, galleries and collectors? Will the local take over? Will national scenes be privileged when it comes to acquisitions? What’s taking place is the dematerialisation of the work. Now we buy a work like a share. This changes its nature, its symbolic capital is increased. It’s the counterpart of what’s happening with the Mona Lisa: people will see the increased value of the work more than the work itself, which is quite absurd. This is going to accelerate: the works will be more virtual, their representative value will be more important than their physical value. This will increase the circulation of goods. With the pandemic, there’s an acceleration of online sales; people buy a name. So I don’t believe in a return to national stages, from the market at least. On the contrary.
Will the online art market be the alternative to traditional fairs? Fairs are just an avatar of these new symbolic economies of works: in a way, there’s nothing to see at fairs, it’s the last moment of physical visualization of works. In the long run they’ll no longer be necessary. Once online, the fair will be permanent.
With their own resources and state support generally declining in recent years, private funding is the hope of many cultural institutions. How do you manage the balance between public subsidies and private support? The economic crisis that’s here will only radicalise a necessary change in the idea of the museum. The multiplication of museums in the world is linked to a cultural policy that’s long been assimilated with an economic policy. This system being in crisis, the museum will be in crisis. We can’t blame museums that are subject to, or born of, a liberal economic logic for being affected by the crisis of liberalism. On the other hand, the fact that museums are inventing formulas other than those of the traditional economy seems quite important. Digital technology could offer other possibilities. Does the crisis make it possible to stimulate another economic model, in which digital technology will find its place? Yes, for the museums that are going to invest in this logic.
Translation: Chloé Baker