An ambitious study of what it means to be a museum in the twenty-first century

In Museums Inside Out, Mark W. Rectanus investigates how museums are blurring the boundaries between their gallery walls and public spaces. He examines how artists are challenging and changing museums, taking readers deep into new experiments in exhibition making. Along the way, Rectanus offers insights about how museums currently exemplify the fusion of the creative and digital economies.

Exploring contemporary museum practices, initiatives, and collaborations, Rectanus analyzes projects like the Collective Museum, which foster land-based museum ecologies by co-curating with local communities. The Schirn Kunsthalle, Petach Tikva Museum of Art, and Tate Modern reflect museums as cultural zones for performance, inside and outside the museum. In addition, he studies a joint project between the Van Gogh Museum and the investment firm Deloitte Luxembourg, extracting insights on the transfer of expertise from museums to the financial sector.

Wide-ranging in its case studies, and boldly putting museum studies and art into conversation, Museums Inside Out delivers vital insights into the ideas and places that museums are creating in contemporary culture.

About the Author

Mark W. Rectanus is University Professor of German at Iowa State University. In addition to his book, Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists, and Corporate Sponsorships (Minnesota, 2002), he has published articles and essays in German Studies Review, New German Critique, TELOS, Performance Research, Finance and Society, and Museum and Society.

Reviews

"Museums Inside Out introduces a new vocabulary to understand the place of artists in redefining and contesting the museum in the context of globalization and the creative economy. This groundbreaking book is necessary reading for anyone seeking to understand the directions of travel of museums and of contemporary art in an age of accelerated mobility."-Michelle Henning, author of Museums, Media and Cultural Theory

Book Information
ISBN 9781517908249
Author Mark W. Rectanus
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint University of Minnesota Press
Publisher University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions(mm) 254mm * 178mm * 38mm