Hans Haacke, in his essay “Museums, Managers of Consciousness,” relates contemporary art museum to the consciousness industry. He emphasizes that museum practices have shifted to industrial model from production, to distribution and consumption. In the article, Haacke extensively describes how museums have changed from their old model of operation to the corporate model. He gives an example of shift museum leadership by saying that museum leadership was once in the form of the sole realm. However, now it is divided into operations officers and artistic directors. Besides, the museum is divided into several departments to improve the quality of products and services they give their audience. As such, the museums work towards expanding the market and consumption of their products and services just it is in the corporate world. It is, therefore, clear that contemporary museums are pressurized to grow their capital by creating a broad audience. Museums, therefore, look for financial support from various individuals, financial institutions, foundations, and corporates to generate more capital to balance their operating budgets and expenses. Besides, artistic staffs are not exceptions from corporate staff since they must keep in mind about artistic products or artworks that will attract a most massive audience when putting on an exhibition and those that will offend the donors, sponsors, and board members when putting on the exhibition. It resembles the corporate world whereby the workforce considers consumer needs and expectations while producing their products and services. Generally, Museums now attracts more business deals because of the ready market and audience.
On the contrary, Haacke argues that with the diversion of Museums to the corporate world, museums are likely to face dangerous political instruments. Haacke bases his arguments on Marx’s theory, which suggests “consciousness is a social product.” The social product in Marx’s theory reflects a specific value system, goals, and aspirations within a particular society. However, it does not include everybody within that society. While access and availability of a specific artwork grow via remediation and reproduction, it starts impacting on public discourse, introduces a particular system of belief, and directly influences various social arena within that society. As museums continue to divert to the corporate world, the consciousness developed by museums via exhibitions and programs is likely to conform to the dominant ideologies of the societal culture, such as gender roles and stereotypes rather than challenging these ideologies.
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For example, David H. Koch generously supported museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of art because of his love of arts. He donated millions of dollars to several art museums. However, Mr. Koch also participated in politics, especially towards the controversial topic, “Climate Change.” Politics prompted controversial views of cultural board members of American Museums, of which Mr. Koch was a member. Mr. Koch based his businesses on chemical and fossil industries of which the cultural board members consider to be against the issue of climate change. Chemical and fossil industries always experience environmental criticism. As such, trusting people like Mr. Koch as a board member of a museum that works towards promoting environment conservation is hard 3 . The board members were even against naming projects that were funded by Mr. Koch after his name because of the controversial debate on the topic of environmental conservation. Several members of scientific community signed agreements that required museums of science and natural history to stop associating with fossil fuel. How can the museums drop their relationship with their main donor and sponsor simply because of cultural and political push? However, since the museums need to build a good reputation in society and at the same time impress the board members, they will be forced to avoid naming buildings after David Koch 4 . The controversial issue of David Koch with the scientific community, museums of science, and natural history of New York serve as an example where consciousness created by museums conforms to dominating ideologies within the societal culture.
References
Haacke, Hans. Museums, Managers of Consciousness (1984). Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists, 276-290. (2009).
Pogrebin, Robin & Harris A. Elizabeth. "David Koch, Embraced As an Arts Patron, Even As Criticism Grew." The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. Last modified September 16, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/arts/david-koch-arts-patron.html .
