Museum, Inc.: Inside the Global Art World / Edition 73

by Paul Werner

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780976147510
Publisher:	Prickly Paradigm Press
Publication date:	02/15/2006
Series:	Paradigm (Chicago, Ill.) Series
Edition description:	73rd ed.
Pages:	88
Product dimensions:	4.50(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.20(d)

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

ONE:  The genius of capitalism–and vice-versa
  I.
  II.
  III.
  IV.
  V.
 
TWO: Rituals of authority
  I.
  II.
  III.
  IV.
 
THREE:  If you build it they will come.  Then you can beat the crap out of them.
  I.
  II.
  III.
  IV.
 
FOUR:  Rio:  The Highest Stage of Bilbao
 
A Note
 

Editorial Reviews

"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."

Boston Globe - Dushko Petrovich

"A rollicking little screed. . . . Werner has a good eye for the smoke- and-mirrors of the marketing people and what it often serves to hide, which is a synergy between art museums and corporate ambition that has little to do with art itself."

Atlantic - Jed Perl

"The capitalist involution of art is announced with cheerful rage in Paul Werner’s Museum, Inc: Inside the Global Art World (2005), in which he parses the proposition that art behaves like money because money behaves like art. This is the capital of the America Werner dubs 'the Living Museum of Wild Capitalism'. Or perhaps that’s Out West."

New Zealand Listener - Ian Wedde

"Rich in metaphor."

New Criterion - James Panero

"Paul Werner uses Thomas Krens's directorship of the Guggenheim Foundation as a case study to argue that museums have taken to acting like 'monster corporations,' globalizing the art industry and treating their collections as capital. Werner's writing style 'is unruly,' say Ida Applebroog. 'He has no restraints, and that's the part I love.'"

ArtNews

"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."

New York Arts Exchange - Beth Gersh-Nesic

"Relentlessly brilliant, hilarious, dead-on and hyperwitty. . . . All sorts of searing insights about today's big-time art world, its unholy mixture of funny money, fake egalitarianism, and backroom investment schemes. . . . A canny erudite analysis of the high-art market from the Enlightenment to now."

Philadelphia Inquirer - Carlin Romano

A rollicking little screed. . . . Werner has a good eye for the smoke- and-mirrors of the marketing people and what it often serves to hide, which is a synergy between art museums and corporate ambition that has little to do with art itself.

— Jed Perl

Atlantic

The capitalist involution of art is announced with cheerful rage in Paul Werner’s Museum, Inc: Inside the Global Art World (2005), in which he parses the proposition that art behaves like money because money behaves like art. This is the capital of the America Werner dubs 'the Living Museum of Wild Capitalism'. Or perhaps that’s Out West.

— Ian Wedde

New Zealand Listener

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

Relentlessly brilliant, hilarious, dead-on and hyperwitty. . . . All sorts of searing insights about today's big-time art world, its unholy mixture of funny money, fake egalitarianism, and backroom investment schemes. . . . A canny erudite analysis of the high-art market from the Enlightenment to now.

— Carlin Romano

Philadelphia Inquirer

Rich in metaphor.

— James Panero

New Criterion

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.

— Beth Gersh-Nesic

New York Arts Exchange