The museum of the Third Kind: in which the author envisions new directions for the art museum as audiences change, architecture evolves, institutions subdivide and electronic resources expand our capabilities and expectations

Art in America, June-July, 2005 by Douglas Davis

(2.) Michael Kimmelman, "An Era Ends fur the Guggenheim," New York Times, Dec. 6, 2002; Lee Rosenbaum, "The Guggenheim Regroups," Art in America, February 2003; and Fred A. Bernstein, "Post Prada, a Design Star, Rein Koolhaas Slims Down," New York Times, Apr. 24, 2003.

(3.) Carol Vogel, "A Museum Visionary Envisions More," New York Times, Apr. 27, 2005.

(4.) This term, scattered for years throughout many of my informal talks, classroom dialogues and complex lecture titles (at U.C. Berkeley in 1996, for example), became a for-real focus at the Victoria & Albert Museum on Mar. 7, 1997, when, inspired by Daniel Libeskind's radical design for the V&A's "Spiral" addition, I revised the title of a keynote lecture for a gathering of museum directors and curators to read: "The Museum of the Third Kind: The Next 100 Years." I returned to the term and concept again in the New York Times on Sept. 20, 2000, in "The Virtual Museum: Imperfect but Promising."

(5.) Most of our larger museums now meet their "cultural consumers" on the same interactive, dense, choice-driven ground recommended by Richard Florida in his widely read and debated book The Rise of the Creative Class (and How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life), New York, Basic Books, 2002. Among his flourishing competition (most of whom agree that the "new" consumer is more selective than his or her predecessor) is Virginia Postrel's The Substance of Style (How the Rise of Aesthetic Value is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness), New York, Harper, 2003, and the stern, sober and prestigious Beyond Productivity: Information, Technology, Innovation, and Creativity, eds. William J. Mitchell, Alan S. Inouye and Marjory S. Blumenthal, Washington, D.C., National Research Council, National Academies Press, 2003.

(6.) See Joseph Giovannini, "Hadid in America: A Lightness of Being," Art in America, November 2003.

(7.) See Tom McDonough, "Diller Scofidio: Critical Structures," Art in America, October 2003.

(8.) Scanning: The Aberrant Architectures of Diller Scofidio, eds. Aaron Betsky, K. Michael Hays, RoseLee Goldberg, et al., New York, Whitney Museum of American Art/Harry N. Abrams, 2003. On the same subject, cf. Zaha Hadid Arkitektur/Architecture, ed. Peter Noever, Vienna, Haus Katz Verlag, 2003.

(9.) I cite here--with gratitude--discussions I had in 1997 with Glenn Lowry, in which he eloquently declared an intention to "retell" the modern art story, "which has been far too linear and predictable," he told me. "We want to soften the lines between the departments and their galleries because the genres of art-making were and are interrelated. The story doesn't fit the contradictory reality of art in our time." Ironically, this is precisely how MOMA behaved in its temporary warehouse quarters in Queens. See also John Eldertield, Imagining the Future of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1998.

(10.) See "Tate and Digital Media: An overview of key ways Tate are utilising digital media," London, Tate Modern, January 2002. This is a "white paper," so to speak, but easily the earliest complete published program by a major museum devoted to the digital arts.