The Museum is Not Enough No.10-14
Various Artists
Lenz Press and Canadian Centre for Architecture
English
Edited by Giovanna Borasi, Albert Ferré, Francesco Garutti, Jayne Kelley
Softcover
224 pages
242 x 312 mm
2025
ISBN 9791280579720
The CCA conceives The Museum Is Not Enough as a platform to reflect on some of the beliefs and concerns that define its curatorial activity—why and how it works—and, by extension, the role of cultural institutions in society. Stating that the museum is not enough means asking what a museum should be and do, and suggests that its entitlement to concentrate knowledge and meaning has dissolved.
As a follow-up of a first volume published in 2019 that built on years of thematic investigations, the book focuses on how the institution works out and on these questions by rethinking its tools and how it relates to others. The Museum Is Not Enough (no. 10–14) gathers conversations among curators, artists, academics, and architects on how institutions engage multiple contexts, objects, and perspectives: reflecting on strategies to unlearn and decentre established ways of seeing and doing; looking closely at how to describe and document archival sources while interrogating the stakes, and often the harm, in separating cultural objects from their context; questioning the relationship between institutions and “the public”; and discussing curatorial tools—and particularly film—that collapse research and display, observation and action, here and there.
Underlying these reflections is the realization that the museum’s activity can’t be constructed from a fixed position. Unless the questions it deals with are observed from another angle, it is hard not to perpetuate the thinking that created them. The book responds to an urgent need to equip the institution to understand how things around it are rapidly changing, and the importance of conveying and discussing this instability. Here, the museum gets outside its physical walls to explore on-site, to talk with people, to connect and activate collaborators, to design conditions for different forms of dialogue to happen on the ground.
With contributions by Sandrine Colard, Corinna Gardner, Oulimata Gueye, Claudio Gulli, Siliva Gutiérrez, Renato Leotta, Andrea Lissoni, Hannah Turner, Akram Zaatari
(Source: https://www.lenz.press/products/the-museum-is-not-enough-no-10-14)
About the Publishers
Lenz publishes books on contemporary art, photography, architecture and design. Our imprint includes catalogues, monographs, theory and artist books.
https://www.lenz.press/
(Source: https://www.lenz.press/)
The Canadian Centre for Architecture is an international research institution and museum premised on the belief that architecture is a public concern. We produce exhibitions and publications, develop and share our collection as a resource, advance research, offer public programs, and host a range of other activities driven by a curiosity about how architecture shapes—and might reshape—contemporary life. We invite collaborators and the wider public to engage with our activities, giving new relevance to architectural thinking in light of current disciplinary and cultural issues.
https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/
(Source: https://www.cca.qc.ca/en/about-overview)
