Towards Tomorrow's Museum 2018

How will the priorities and policies of art museums change over the next ten years? Who will be their audiences and how will they engage with the museum? How might cultural institutions respond to developments in domestic and global politics?

Towards Tomorrow’s Museum introduces and analyses key themes concerning the future of the museum. Over ten sessions, the course considers the major issues involved in rethinking what a museum could and should be, its programme and collection, and how its activities sit within a broader social and cultural landscape.

Led by Richard Martin, the course consists of ten three-hour sessions plus a reading week. Sessions involve short lectures, group discussions, participant presentations and talks by Tate staff members about the range of their work at the museum, as well as from other guests. Visits to the collection displays, exhibitions including Ilya and Emilia Kabakov and Joan Jonas at Tate Modern and Tate Britain will be arranged. Topics of discussion include new curatorial methods, the impact of digital technology, experiments in learning and programming, and how institutions might engage with a diverse range of publics.

Balancing critical reflection on existing institutional models with practical steps towards creating new approaches, the course pays particular attention to the tensions and contradictions involved in institutional change. The course emphasises an international perspective, assessing Tate and other museums within the global social and cultural dynamics of the twenty-first century. No prior knowledge of art history or museum studies is necessary.

Dr Richard Martin is Curator of Public Programmes at Tate, a Visiting Lecturer at King’s College London, and a writer on contemporary art, film and architecture. He is the author of The Architecture of David Lynch (Bloomsbury, 2014).

​​Organised in collaboration with the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, King’s College London​