Museum, Inc.: Inside the Global Art World

by Paul Werner

Has corporate business overtaken the art world? It's no secret that art and business have always mixed, but their relationship today sparks more questions than ever. Museum, Inc. describes the new art conglomerates from an insider's perspective, probing how their roots run deep into corporate culture. Paul Werner draws on his nine years at the Guggenheim Museum to reveal that contemporary art museums have not broken radically with the past, as often claimed. Rather, Werner observes, they are the logical outcome of the evolution of cultural institutions rooted in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the colonial expansion of the liberal nation-state, and the rhetoric of democracy.
In a witty and argumentative style, Werner critically analyzes today's art institutions and reframes the public's accepted view of them, exposing how their apparent success belies the troubling forces operating within them. He ultimately argues that the art museum we know and love may have already run its course. An engaging discourse structured as an informal gallery talk, Museum, Inc. is a thought-provoking and passionate polemic that offers ideas for a new, more democratic museum.

Genres: Art, Politics, Nonfiction

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Paul Werner's third volume on museums is devoted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and its bizarre "Free admission" policy. The book is called Jump Jim Corot. Cash, class and Culture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Paul is equally at home in Europe and in New York: he is fluent in French and English, and spends part of each year in Vienna. He is the editor of WOID: a journal of visual language and the publisher of the Orange Press. His writings on museums under capitalism include a number of articles in French and English, as well as several previous books: Museum, Inc. Inside the Global Art World (which has been translated into French and Italian)and The Red Museum: Art, economics and the end of capital. Paul holds a PhD in Art History and a DSFS (Danger to the Security of the French State), going back to his involvement in May, 1968. He has also published a number of pamphlets on medieval art techniques.

Reviews

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good.

[DEBRA · Rating 1 out of 5]

About the worst book on this subject I have read.

[Richard · Rating 1 out of 5]

This screed reads less like a thoughtful critique and more like the frenetic raging of a disgruntled former employee leaving his job with a flamethrower as he backs out of the door. Any crumbs of interesting food for thought are quickly swept away by some of the smarmiest, nastiest and most vindictive screeds I’ve ever read. As a resignation letter, this might have some merit, but it looks more like the verbal diarrhea of someone posting pseudo-intellectual claptrap from the confines of his Mom’s basement. It’s not even worth it as an exercise in rubbernecking; this train wreck isn’t even interesting. Move along, folks. Avoid at all costs.

[Katrinka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic read—and the best corrective I can think of to "Whose Muse?"

[13oiRD · Rating 2 out of 5]

The tea is not very hot. Enron sponsors a great deal of contemporary art. That's about as spicy as it gets in this book. Most of its 75 pages is whining about his manager at the Guggenheim.

[shawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great little incendiary volume picking apart the recent corporate approach of the Guggenheim Museum and other world-class art institutions like it. Written by a former high-level employee/board member, it sheds very interesting light on the counterintuitive way that museums have taken to operating, becoming corporations that need to make money rather than cultural institutions. His breakdown of recent specific exhibitions that have been engineered in terms of bringing people through the doors rather than provoking thought or furthering scholarship is particularly enlightening.

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

First person take on working inside the Guggenheim franchise world. The guy has quite a few things to say about Mr. Thomas Krens. Quick read.

[Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Witty, funny, and very scathing. But underneath it all is a complex and insightful critique of the contemporary art world. Short and sweet, I would say.

[James Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining, if disorganized. A docent's rant against the absurdity of his industry.