Museum Futures / Future Museums
Emily Cadotte
Museum Futures / Future Museums
Workshop, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Wednesdays, 14-18 h, 7 dates: 15.4., 29.4., 13.5., 27.5., 10.6., 24.6., 8.7.2026, Hardenbergstr. 33, room 151
Registration on Moodle starts on 9.4.2026:https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=3047
Enrollment Key: museum
The museum, while traditionally mandated to preserve the past, is perhaps also the original future-oriented institution—its very act of preservation presupposes a future audience for whom objects and knowledge are safeguarded. Increasingly, museums are embracing this role more explicitly, evolving from repositories of memory into active agents in shaping cultural, environmental, and technological futures. This shift is embodied in the emergence of “future museums” such as Rio de Janeiro’s Museum of Tomorrow, Dubai’s Museum of the Future, Switzerland’s Maison d’Ailleurs, and Futurium in Berlin, each of which reconfigures the museum not just as a space of reflection, but of projection. But what do these forward-looking museums offer and whose futures are imagined?
In this course, students will choose one of two options for completion: “Design A Future Museum,” by conceptualizing and prototyping a radical, speculative museum of the future. This can take any form—from an institution committed to sustainability practices to one grounded in Indigenous epistemologies, to one that is perhaps not an institution at all. OR “Create a Work for a Future Museum” where students will produce an original artwork (or prototype of one) intended for a future museum context of their choosing. Students choosing option 1 are also invited to collaborate with those choosing option 2. This course will also include guest lectures (TBA), and a field trip within the city.
References:
Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (1995)
Claire Bishop, Radical Museology (2013)
Fernando Domínguez Rubio, Still Life: Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum (2020)
Bruno Latour and Christophe Leclercq, eds. Reset Modernity! (2016)
Natasa Petrešin-Bachelez, ‘For Slow Institutions’, e-flux, 85, October 2017, www.e-flux.com/journal/85/155520/for-slow-institutions
Bénédicte Savoy, Africa’s Struggle for Its Art (2022)
www.museumforfuturefossils.com
cmagazine.com/articles/bush-manifesto
Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: weekly readings; regular, active participation; completion of final project.
Emily Cadotte is a doctoral candidate of Art & Visual Culture at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, currently based in Marseille, France, where she teaches at Aix-Marseille Université. Her research charts the privatization of public arts institutions. She has held various arts administration, education, and curatorial roles. She completed an MA in Contemporary Art History at OCAD University, Toronto, has presented at conferences internationally, and published peer-reviewed work in PUBLIC, and Art Education.