Overview

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.

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Reviews

What a treat. And what catharsis. . . . 75 delicious pages of witty remarks and cogent arguments. It's truly enviable to be able to write like this. . . . A must-read for people who feel that something has gone off in the museum business. --;i>New York Arts Exchange --Beth Gersh-Nesic New York Arts Exchange

At the Guggenheim, Krens''s ways of filling the proliferating branches . . . were all hailed at the time for their business savvy and cultural daring. But as former Guggenheim employee Paul Werner chronicles in his punchy little book, Museum Inc: Inside the Global Art World, Krens''s bold maneuvers didn''t stand the test of even a decade''s time. When you learn, for example, that BMW underwrote the motorcycle show, Krens''s cultural daring loses some of its luster. When you find out they gave Krens a motorcycle (which he later returned), it doesn''t even look like good business. -- Dushko Petrovich Boston Globe (09/17/2006)

Author Information

Paul Werner is the editor of WOID and the publisher of the Orange Press. He is a lecturer at New York University and the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

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