Museum clusters and networks

In its intensive development in recent decades, the museum has become a symbol of industrialization of culture and culturalisation of social life, economy and urban planning. Not only has it taken the place of industry in the post-modern city – functionally, and often also physically, in abandoned industrial complexes, but it has gradually adopted its spatial behavior and logic of clustering and networking too, which is the subject of my research. After extensive doctoral study on the global phenomenon of museum clusters and networks, in this study I focused on their potential in the region that effectively bypassed the museum boom, and instead constant economic, political and social crisis were going on.

Stressing the importance of the “museum cluster effect” in the post-Bilbao and (post)crisis era, the study examines the macro-level of cultural urbanism in the  cities of Serbia. It maps clusters, routes and networks of museums and other cultural institutions and spaces that support them, analyzing their role and potential in urban and regional development.

In the search for new urban models, cultural infrastructure today has the potential to become a transformative and connective tissue of the city and society, turning the culture and education into urban project. In the context of the knowledge-based society and intelligent network city, the new forms, use and impact of the cultural landscape in the mobilisation and diffusion of culture and cultural information becomes a key issue and a global challenge. Here they are observed also as a form of exhibiting and representing architecture, urbanism and landscape, and teaching about them. The emphasis on the symbolic, object and spatial didactics of museum clusters and routes, ranging from traditional centers of power to natural reserves, inscribes this study and the phenomenon that it deals with in the development priorities, providing at the same time theoretical and practical contributions to the discipline of urban curating and to the understanding of culture as one of the key dimensions of sustainability.

No cultural institution has experienced such a boom and similarly marked the end of the twentieth century as the museum, establishing itself as a tourist magnet, an architectural manifesto, and a symbol of the postmodern city and the culture in which we live. In this culture, the museum occupies a privileged place also physically, in the city. And not only does it occupy this place, but it creates it, defines it, changes it and gives it meaning. I argue that that place is in the museum cluster.

And in the cluster, the museum is changing; the meaning and the importance of its basic aspects are changing. My hypothesis is that in the museum project the (to)urbanistic aspect - its place and relationship with the city and the citizens, permanent or temporary - takes precedence over its museographic and architectonic aspect. The content - collection and display - and the architecture of the museum merge into the cultural density or touristic offer of the cluster, highlighting the place and urbanism of the museum in the foreground.

This place - the cluster - becomes a manifesto and an instrument of changes in the city and society. It acquires new dimensions and roles, and provides the key to a new reading - not only of the museum, but also of the city - showing a profound shift in their relationship and in their conception. It reflects the intimate interaction of architecture, urbanism and tourism on different levels. New models of the museum-cluster, the cluster of museums and the "city of museums" represent different scales of a (to)urbanism that maximizes the use and impact of museums and public spaces between them - or more broadly, of the complete cultural infrastructure - in the mobilization and dissemination of culture and cultural information.

Drawing on the theory of the locus genii, I confirm the fundamental role of the museum cluster as a force that organizes, generates and transforms the museum system and the urban system. In the best tradition of the Grand Tour, this (to)urbanism, this “city of museums”, integrates tourism and didactic intentions, creating a new understanding and presentation of the cultural heritage – spatial (including the very urban structure), object (which spills from the museum into the pubic space) and symbolic – and making possible a transformation of the cities of past into the cities of future. It places new challenges also to the public space, as a three dimensional relational, educational and cultural space, demanding that it be the mediator in this transformation.

"This paper examines the marketing strategies and business process management from “Sistema Parchi Val di Cornia” (Val di Cornia Park System). Even though this case study has been already described in literature on archeology and business economics as an example of best practice in cultural heritage management, little attention has been focused
on analysis of the innovativeness of museum communication and the possible development of relationships with local stakeholders.
After clarifying the theoretical framework and by considering primary and secondary data, the case study focuses on the most important results achieved by the System over the last ten years. The paper then focuses on the process of museum standards’ implementation, analysing the distinctiveness of product decisions and advantages of network organization.
Communication contents are particularly innovative because they transmit the broad spectrum of value of cultural items and express the relationship with the original context.
A strength of management is also the effective collaboration among different institutional actors, which has to be developed to ensure the System’s survival."

In our culture the museum occupies a privileged place symbolically, but also physically, in the city. And not only does it occupy it, but it creates it, defines it, changes it and gives it meaning. This thesis demonstrates that that place is in the museum cluster. And in the cluster, out of which it becomes almost impossible to contemplate the museum, the museum is changing; the meaning and the importance of its basic aspects are changing. My hypothesis is that in the museum project the urbanistic aspect – its place and relationship with the city – takes precedence over its museographic and architectonic aspect.

The content – collection and display – and the architecture of the museum merge into the cultural density of the cluster as the place of the museum, highlighting that place and urbanism in the foreground. The place – the cluster – thus becomes the key to a new reading of the museum and the city. Supporting the idea of multi-place, with multiple functions, meanings and audiences, the cluster is dismembered. It is considered as the physical location in the city, the urban form the cluster takes, the dynamics and relationships it establishes, and the public place which it creates in this interaction with the city.

Through a historical, comparative and critical analysis of these four dimensions of the place of museums, in the four chapters, the dissertation proves the hypothesis, as well as the theory of the locus genii, showing the fundamental role of the museum cluster as a force that organizes, generates and transforms the museum system and the urban system. It demonstrates that the museum boom, by creating, changing, and emphasizing museum clusters, represents a revolution in the relationship and conception of the museum and of the city.

From the museum cluster, a whole range of radical changes and innovations in the museum, in the very museum cluster and in the city is observed, through which is explained the primacy of the urbanistic aspect in the project of the museum, and the theory is extended to the importance of the museum aspect in the project of the city. The cluster of museums is raised in the rank of the urban manifesto, showing that new models of the museum-cluster, the museum cluster and the "city of museums" are different scales or levels of an urbanism of densities and flows that maximizes the use and impact of museums and public spaces between them in the mobilization and dissemination of culture and cultural information.

Although the study includes a wider historical and geographic space to demonstrate the extension of this still little investigated and insufficiently well-known phenomenon, the accent is on the transformations of the museums and their clusters and systems during last three decades, in the principal European cities, including also the remarkable cases from other continents that suggest the possible directions of future development.

Keywords: museum cluster, contemporary city, public space

Museum has a special place in the power structure, and a special place in the structure of the city. My research shows that that place today is in the museum cluster. In the cluster, however, do not lie only the future and the development potentials of the museum, but the history of the city and the shifts of political and urbanistic ideologies can be read through it. The museum cluster represents an urbanistic, or an ideological manifesto, expressing the most elevated strivings in the construction of the city and of the image which a society wants to display about itself. It reflects urban models of different periods: the past ones, in reused representative buildings and complexes, and those prevailing at the time of their creation, in the clusters built specifically for that purpose. This conveys to the museum landscape they create an exceptional educational capacity, while constant changes in the museum cluster and in the use of its spaces, primarily public, increase the complexity of this issue and point out also the changes in the contemporary society and ideologies.

The "Bilbao effect" has been one of the most used concepts and one of the most discussed phenomena in the urban history of the last two decades. This paper questions what the proliferation of the replicas of the effect, imitated innumerable times in other cities wishing for similar success, has meant for the disciplines of architecture and urbanism and for the system of cultural infrastructure.
We analyze those urban strategies that use museum buildings as triggers and catalysts for growth or physical, functional or symbolic regeneration, focusing on cases of newly created neighbourhoods (Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi; West Kowloon, Hong Kong; Nuevo Polanco, Mexico City), and those that disseminate the cultural industry in art studios, galleries and museums to dynamize urban centres or re-qualify old industrial and port areas (Wynwood, Design District and Museum Park, Miami; West Bund, Shanghai) and examining the nuances, intentions and contexts, the general validity of the model and the causes of the diverse results. The sacred barriers between museums and business, if ever existed, have fallen, hence we pay special attention to the process of developing cultural mega-projects and their search for a satisfactory model even with many different actors involved.
We demonstrate that the content, the container and their surrounding do not lose importance in the cultural and tourist offer and in the educational project of the new global generation of cultural projects, but that the expectations move from an isolated building towards an ensemble, from architecture to urbanism, from one function to synergy, from the "Bilbao effect" to the cluster effect, from urban regeneration to global reposition.

Keywords: museum, urban art, urban culture, urban regeneration, new urban strategies

The significant transformation of postmodern cities and the urban life that pushes them into a fearless competition, causing the need for urban regeneration and revitalization strategies, placed an increasing emphasis on culture policies. Within this context, the booming institution of museum marked strongly the end of the 20th century, developing more and more spatial concentrations, known as museum clusters. This process of systematization and ordering of museum representation is not new and can be traced from the very beginning of museology, but in a relatively short period it experienced a tremendous expansion, becoming an important element of the tourism sector and urban economy.

This study aims to show the change of priorities in the conception of museums, moving the from the museographic aspect, over the accent on the architecture, towards the highlighted urban dimension and a new urban model. It questions the change of exhibition cultures and policies of urban representation, as well as the interaction between thus created public spaces and networks of museums and other circuits of culture, commerce and leisure in the city. On the more general level, the paper analyzes the change of the role of culture and leisure in our society, and how architecture and art position themselves in these conditions, moving from representation and exhibition in the 20th-century museum to representation and exhibition in the 21st-century city.

The primary focus is on the phenomenon of museum cluster and the way it shapes the built environment - the so-called ‘physical aspects of public culture’. The paper makes an overview of the characteristics that mark the creation of these urban complexes throughout history, following the changes of cultural policies in urban planning strategies, as an introduction for an in-depth analysis of urban morphology and architectural vocabulary used in contemporary museum clusters and their relationship of different urban circuits and networks. The coverage of the study is confined to major cities at the end of the twentieth century, mainly European, including also the remarkable cases from other continents in order to show the broadness of the phenomenon and to respond to the main topic of the conference, defining the place of museum clusters in the “Cross-national transfer of planning ideas and local identity”

Replacing the missing agora, the museum cluster conquered all forms of urban morphology and topography, creating museum quarters, squares, streets and parks, hills, river banks, islands and dry beds. The architecture and urbanism of these spaces can be understood as an ideological, sociological and public reflection of the institutions themselves, but also as a medium for the promotion of the cultural relevance of the cities, providing an architectonic narrative for the art and urban curating. Advantages and disadvantages for the city and the museums have been analyzed, showing that success and failure depend on various factors and that, just like in any other urban model, there are no universal recipes. The global scale of the phenomena and its adaptability confirm the continuity and dynamism of this process, but also warn about the necessity of attention to cultural activities and experiments (the so-called software) in the redevelopment of public space and cultural infrastructure (the hardware).

O “efeito Bilbao” tem sido um dos conceitos mais utilizados e um dos fenômenos
mais discutidos na história urbana das últimas duas décadas. Este capítulo questiona
o que tem representado a proliferação de réplicas do efeito, imitado inúmeras vezes em outras cidades desejosas de sucesso semelhante, para as disciplinas de arquitetura e urbanismo e para o sistema de infraestruturas
culturais. Analisamos essas estratégias urbanas que utilizam edifícios de museus como gatilhos e catalisadores para crescimento ou regeneração física, funcional ou simbólica, com foco nos casos de bairros recém criados (Ilha Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi, West Kowloon de Hong Kong, Nuevo Polanco, Cidade do México) e aqueles que disseminam a indústria cultural em estúdios, galerias e museus de artistas para energizar centros urbanos ou reclassificar antigas áreas industriais e portuárias
(Wynwood, Design District e Museum Park, Miami, West Bund, Xangai), examinando
suas peculiaridades e nuances, intenções e contextos, a validade geral do modelo e as
causas dos diversos resultados. As barreiras sagradas entre museus e empresas, se existiram, caíram, e por isso prestamos especial atenção ao processo de desenvolvimento de megaprojetos culturais e sua busca por um modelo satisfatório
mesmo com atores muito diversos envolvidos. Mostramos que o conteúdo, o contêiner e seu ambiente não perdem a importância na oferta cultural e turística e no projeto educacional da nova geração global de projetos culturais, mas que as expectativas passam de um prédio isolado a um todo, da arquitetura ao urbanismo, de uma função à sinergia, do “efeito Bilbao” ao efeito cluster, da regeneração urbana
à reposição global.

Klaus Platzgummer talked to Martino Stierli, the Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The talk was shaped by Stierli's farewell from academia, and his new engagement at the MoMA since March 2015. Focal points of the talk were MoMA's near future, the institution MoMA, and its role in history and theory of architecture. Furthermore Stierli commented on the emerging museum networks and the problems with exhibiting architecture.