Going Global: Modern Art Museums in the Context of Globalization, Multiculturalism, and Coloniality

The modern art museum presents two faces to society. On the one hand, it purports to advance the enlightenment of the individual and the enrichment of the individual’s experience, and to propagate a shared understanding of modern and contemporary art. From its point of view, it supports societal cohesion and unity. On the other hand, and certainly recently, decolonial activists who agitate against high-finance capitalism and inequality, contest this perspective and consider the modern art museum as an exclusive site of inequality, racism, and coloniality. From their point of view, the museum is an institution that endorses a neoliberal stratification of art through representing an understanding of culture and creativity that is predominantly intended for the privileged. I present the modern art museum as a particularly ambiguous institution that is affected by and creates friction in relation to three political-theoretical concepts that have been relevant for society at large during the last several decades: globalization, multiculturalism, and coloniality. I research the way these three critical concepts affect museums of modern art. I connect each of them to a specific historical period. Starting in approximately 2020, the thesis follows a historical itinerary back to the late 1920s when the first modern art museums were established in Europe and the United States.