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buying of goods, as well as objects, and of ideas in the form of education and information, is a

passion, a means of proving yourself and surviving.

At the same time, various museums follow different strategies, politics and functional logics.

We have in front of us a broad range of existing natures, philosophies and interactions. We

could think of a comparison between the politics of the Whitney Museum, 8 The New

Museum 9 and MoMa, 10 all three in New York. Each of these art institutions has developed

from a different political, cultural and economic background in the same urban environment;

each deals with its own context; each follows its own research path, its own reflexes and

representations of global and local artistic processes; each seeks its own dialog with its public

and social responsibility.

Transforming the history and value of art and artistic objects and ideas from different

perspectives, radically dealing with museum hierarchies, the power of cultural norms of the

existing institutional matrix, and issues of spatial relations, historically it has been easier to

artists and curators with their subjectivity and obsessions, speculative philosophies, inner

museums, the reinstalling or shift of perspectives, irony and political audacity to develop

critical artistic strategies for criticizing museum institutions, than it has been for theinstitutions themselves. This specific approach is the institutional critique imposed by

Duchamp and Piccabia through Jeff Koons and Haim Steinbach who look at a critique of

consumption, of commodities and the order of the artistic object, or curators like Harald

Szeemann 11 or Nicolas Bourriaud who have revolutionized the contemporary perception of

the function of the museum as a space and arena for arranging artistic, visionary and cultural

hierarchies, to Hans-Ulrich Obrist and his ideas on the Imaginary Museum.

Today along with enraptured fascination for these approaches, there is a tendency to think that

the institutional critique of the 70s, 80s and 90s looks as if fully incorporated in the art

institutions. For various reasons todays institutions have succeeded in getting used to

8 Cf. . Although the Whitneys acquisition budget wasalways rather modest, the Museum made the most of its resources by purchasing the work of living artists,particularly those who were young and not well known. It has been a long-standing tradition of the Whitney to

purchase works from the Museums Annual and Biennial exhibitions, which began in 1932 as a showcase forrecent American art. A number of the Whitneys masterpieces came from these exhibitions, including works by

Arshile Gorky, Stuart Davis, Reginald Marsh, Philip Guston, and Jasper Johns. Even today, the Museumcontinues to enrich its Permanent Collection via the Biennial; among the recent acquisitions are works by MikeKelley, Matthew Barney, Louise Bourgeois, Zoe Leonard, Matthew Ritchie, and Shahzia Sikander.

9Being a board member of a successful institution is attractive as social status, yet we dont want a board that

believes the institution could be undermined through too much experimentation or radical positioning. The NewMuseum was founded by a curator (a rare among museums) on the premise of curatorial entrepreneurship, which

should continuously redefine itself. Thats the philosophy of this museum and its why we dont have a bigcollection. Carolee Thea, Interview with Dan Cameron, in: Foci interviews with ten international curators,2001, p. 107. It is in the venue of The New Museum that a number of artists have exhibited for the first time in amuseum environment, such as Carolee Thea, Adrian Piper, David Wojnarowicz, Martha Rosler, after they had

no possibility ever to work with a large and official institution before, and some of them were discovered for theinternational world of art through their personal shows at The New Museum.

10 Founded in 1929 as an educational institution, The Museum of Modern Art is dedicated to being the foremostmuseum of modern art in the world. From the official MoMa site .

11Following the brouhaha of Documenta 5, Szeemann retired to Ticino and there invented his own profession

as an independent exhibition maker. In a spirit of pataphysical enterprise, he founded the Agency for SpiritualGuest Labor as a subsidiary of the (imaginary) Museum of Obsessions. Tobia Bezzola, Natural Pathos.Harald Szeemann (1933-2005), in: Parkett No. 73/2005, p. 175.

Szeemann referring metaphorically to Marcel Duchamp: Of course you have inner rules, like a museum ofobsessions that is in your head. Then there are the freedoms or constrictions that we have from place to place.Carolee Thea, Interview with Harald Szeemann, op. cit., p. 18.