Artist Museums

Artists have never had a good relationship with museums. Some even attempted to demolish them. Because, in their opinion, museums deprived art of life. Yet, their cause was to merge art with life. Unable to contend with museums, artists like Schwitters, Lissitzky, Duchamp, and Haacke established their own alternative museums. And, in Haacke's words, they began to expose "how museums manage consciousness." They opened up for debate the understandings of history and power that nourished modern museums. Thanks to them, museums began to be examined, above all, as environments where modernity was displayed. Contemporary critical museology was born and became the focus of many disciplines that questioned modernity. Artist Museums compiles the works of those whose art is museums. Art historians and critics James Putnam, Benjamin Buchloh, and Walter Grasskamp discover the politics within these works in their essays.