The project engages with organizational challenges and future orientated questions arising from the daily work in art museums. Researchers develop the following main topics together with the group of museums for discussion and further analysis.
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In the first phase of on-site research, the dimensions of organizational transformations among art museums have emerged and been discussed within the core group of participating museums and researchers. The initial engagement identified time, space, conflicts, politics and communication as core themes driving organizational transformations in and around art museums.
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Within the broader mapping of organizational transformations of art museums, sustainability plays a crucial role in how museums (ought) to organize: Sustainability here can be understood and reflected upon in almost infrastructural ways – as a cross-cutting-issue shaping, challenging, and organizing all levels of museal work: from architecture to exhibition planning, from curatorial practices via institutional change and structures to financial planning, social engagement and not least the very role of art museums in society.
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As a crucial aspect for embedding museums into their respective socio-spatial environment, the question of heterogeneous communities has become increasingly important and prominent – both displayed in exhibitions and as relationships between museums and their respective neighborhoods, local art scenes and alternative exhibition spaces. Using the case of the Belvedere as a point of departure, the dynamics and at times paradoxical relationships between the museum as a World Heritage Site, a Baroque jewel, one of the oldest museums in the world, and a showcase for contemporary art all at once are discussed and further investigated.