The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum

Author(s): Rosalind Krauss

Source: October, Vol. 54 (Autumn, 1990), pp. 3-17
Published by: The MIT Press
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The Cultural Logic of the Late

CapitalistMuseum*

ROSALIND

KRAUSS

May 1, 1983: I rememberthe drizzle and cold of that springmorning,as

the feministsectionof the May Day parade formedup at R6publique. Once we
startedmovingout, carryingour banners for the march towardsthe Place de la
Bastille,we began our chant. "Qui paie ses dettess'enrichit,"it went,"qui paie
ses dettes s'enrichit,"in a reminderto Mitterand'snewlyappointed Ministerof
Women's Affairsthat the Socialists' campaign promises were still deeply in
arrears. Looking back at thatcrynow, froma perspectivefirmlysituatedat the
end of the '80s, sometimesreferredto as "the roaring'80s," the idea thatpaying
yourdebts makesyou richseemspatheticallynaive. What make you rich,we have
been taught by a decade of casino capitalism,is preciselythe opposite. What
makes you rich, fabulouslyrich, beyond your wildestdreams, is leveraging.
July 17, 1990: Coolly insulatedfromthe heat wave outside, Suzanne Page
and I are walkingthroughher exhibitionof worksfromthe Panza Collection,an
installationthat,except for three or foursmall galleries,entirelyfillsthe Mus&e
d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. At firstI am extremelyhappy to encounter
theseobjects- manyof themold friendsI have not seen since theirearlydaysof
fillvastsuitesof galleries,having
exhibitionin the 1960s - as theytriumphantly
muscled everythingelse off the walls to create that experience of articulated
spatialpresence specificto Minimalism.The importanceof thisspace as a vehicle
for the works is somethingSuzanne Page is conscious of as she describes the
desperateeffortof remodelingvasttractsof the museumto give it the burnished
neutralitynecessaryto functionas backgroundto these Flavinsand Andres and
Morrises.Indeed, it is her focuson the space - as a kindof reifiedand abstracted
entity- that I finallyfindmost arresting.This climaxes at the point when she
*
This text, writtenas a lecture for the September 10, 1990 meeting of the International
Associationof Museums of Modern Art (CIMAM) in Los Angeles, is being published here considerably before I have been able to deliver,as fullyas I would have liked,on the promiseof itstitle.The
timelinessof the issues,however,suggestedthat it was more importantto open them to immediate
discussionthan to wait to refineeither the theoreticallevel of the argumentor the rhetoricwithin
which it is framed.

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OCTOBER

positionsme at the spot withinthe exhibitionthatshe describesas being,forher,

somehow the mostriveting.It is in one of the newlystrippedand smoothedand
neutralizedgalleries,made whitelyluminousby the serialprogressionof a recent
workby Flavin. But we are not actuallylookingat the Flavin. At her directionwe
are scanningthe two ends of the gallerythroughthe large doorwaysof whichwe
can see the disembodiedglow produced by two other Flavins,each in an adjoining room: one of these an intense apple green light; the other an unearthly,
chalkyblue radiance. Both announce a kind of space-beyondwhichwe are not
yet in, but for which the lightfunctionsas the intelligiblesign. And fromour
pointof viewboth theseaureoles can be seen to frame- like strangelyindustrialized haloes-- the way the gallery'sown starklycylindrical,InternationalStyle
columns enter our point of view. We are having this experience, then, not in
frontof what could be called the art, but in the midstof an oddly emptied yet
grandiloquentspace of which the museum itself--as a building--is somehow
the object.
Withinthisexperience,it is the museumthatemergesas powerfulpresence
and yetas properlyempty,the museumas a space fromwhichthe collectionhas
withdrawn.For indeed, the effectof thisexperience is to renderit impossibleto
look at the paintingshangingin those fewgalleriesstilldisplayingthe permanent
collection. Compared to the scale of the Minimalistworks,the earlier paintings
and sculpturelook impossiblytinyand inconsequential,like postcards,and the
galleriestake on a fussy,crowded, culturallyirrelevantlook, like so manycurio
shops.

These are two scenes thatnag at me as I thinkabout the "cultural logic of

the late capitalistmuseum," because somehow it seems to me that if I can close
the gap betweentheirseemingdisparateness,I can demonstratethe logic of what
we see happening, now, in museums of modern art.' Here are two possible
bridges,flimsyperhaps,because fortuitous,but nonethelesssuggestive.
1. In theJuly 1990 Artin Americathere occurs the unanalyzedbut telling
juxtaposition of two articles. One is the essay called "Selling the Collection,"
whichdescribesthe massivechange in attitudenow in place according to which
the objectsin a museum'skeepingcan now be coollyreferredto, byitsdirectoras
well as its trustees,as "assets."2 This bizarre Gestalt-switch
fromregardingthe
collectionas a formof culturalpatrimonyor as specificand irreplaceableembodimentsof culturalknowledgeto one of eyingthe collection'scontentsas so much
capital-- as stocksor assets whose value is one of pure exchange and thus only
1.
Throughout, my debt to FredricJameson's "Postmodernism,or The Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism," (New LeftReview,no. 146 [July-August1984], pp. 53-93) will be obvious.
2.
Philip Weiss, "Selling the Collection," Artin America,vol. 78 (July 1990), pp. 124-131.

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The CulturalLogic of theLate CapitalistMuseum

trulyrealized when theyare put in circulation- seems to be the inventionnot

merelyof dire financialnecessity:a result,that is, of the American tax law of
1986 eliminatingthe deductibilityof the marketvalue of donated art objects.
Rather, it appears the functionof a more profoundshiftin the verycontextin
whichthe museumoperates-a contextwhose corporatenatureis made specific
not onlyby the major sourcesof fundingformuseumactivitiesbut also, closer to
home, by the makeup of its boards of trustees.Thus the writerof "Selling the
Collection" can say: "To a great extent the museum community'scrisisresults
from the free-marketspirit of the 1980s. The notion of the museum as a
guardian of the public patrimonyhas given way to the notion of a museum as a
corporateentitywitha highlymarketableinventoryand the desire forgrowth."
Over mostof the course of the article,the marketunderstoodto be putting
pressure on the museum is the art market. This is, for example, what Evan
Maurer of the MinneapolisInstituteof Art seems to be referringto when he says
thatin recentyearsmuseumshave had to deal witha "market-driven
operation"
or what George Goldner of the Gettymeans when he says that "there will be
some people who will want to turn the museum into a dealership." It is only at
the end of the essay,when dealing withthe GuggenheimMuseum's recentsales,
thatsome largercontextthan the art market'sbuyingand sellingis broached as
the field withinwhich deaccessioning mightbe discussed, although the writer
does not reallyenter this context.
But "Selling the Collection" comes back-to-backwithquite anotherarticle,
which, called "Remaking Art History," raises the problems that have been
spawned withinthe art marketitselfby one particularart movement,namely
Minimalism.3For Minimalismalmost fromthe verybeginninglocated itself,as
one of its radical acts, withinthe technologyof industrialproduction. That
objects were fabricatedfromplans meant that these plans came to have a conceptual statuswithinMinimalismallowing for the possibilityof replicationof a
given work thatcould cross the boundaries of what had alwaysbeen considered
the unreproducibilityof the aestheticoriginal. In some cases these plans were
sold to collectorsalong withor even in place of an originalobject,and fromthese
plans the collectordid indeed have certainpieces refabricated.In other cases it
has been the artisthimselfor herselfwho has done the refabrication,either
issuingvariousversionsof a given object--multiple originals,so to speak--as is
the case withthe many Morris glass cubes, or replacinga deterioratedoriginal
witha contemporaryremake as in the case of Alan Saret. This break withthe
aestheticof the original is, the writerof thisessay argues, part and parcel with
Minimalismitself,and so she writes:"If, as viewersof contemporaryart, we are
unwillingto relinquishthe conception of the unique original art object, if we
insistthatall refabricationsare fraudulent,then we misunderstandthe natureof

3.

Susan Hapgood, "Remaking Art History,"Artin America,vol. 78 (July1990), pp. 114-123.

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OCTOBER

many of the key worksof the '60s and '70s. . . . If the original object can be
replaced withoutcompromisingthe originalmeaning,refabricationshould raise
no controversy."
However, as we know,it is not exactlyviewerswho are raisingcontroversy
in this matter,but artiststhemselves,as Donald Judd and Carl Andre have
protestedCount Panza's various decisions to act on the basis of the certificates
theysold him and make duplicate versionsof theirworks.4And indeed the fact
that the group countenancingthese refabricationsis made up of the works'
owners (both private collectors and museums)-that is, the group normally
thoughtto have most interestin specificallyprotectingthe statusof theirpropertyas original--indicates how invertedthissituationis. The writerof thisessay
also speaks of the marketas playingsome role in the storyshe has to tell. "As the
public's interestin the art of this period grows," she says, "and the market
pressuresincrease,the issuesthatarise when worksare refabricatedwillno doubt
gain prominence as well." But what the nature of either "the issues" or the
"market pressures" mightreallybe, she leaves it to the futureto decide.
In the bridge I am settingup here, then,we watch the activityof markets
the aestheticoriginal,eitherto change it into an "asset," as in the
restructuring
case outlined by the firstarticle, or to normalize a once-radical practice of
challengingthe veryidea of the originalthrougha recourseto the technologyof
mass production.That thisnormalizationexploitsa possibilityalreadyinscribed
in the specificprocedures of Minimalismwill be importantto the rest of my
argument.But fornow I simplypoint to thejuxtapositionof a descriptionof the
financialcrisisof the modern museumwithan account of a shiftin the natureof
the original that is a functionof one particular artistic movement, to wit,
Minimalism.
2. The second bridge can be constructedmore quickly.It consistsmerely
of a peculiar rhymingbetween a famous remark of Tony Smith's from the
opening phase of Minimalismand one by the Guggenheim's Director, Tom
Krens, made last spring.Tony Smith is describinga ride he took in the early
1950s on the New JerseyTurnpike when it was stillunfinished.He is speakingof
the endlessnessof the expanse, of its sense of being culturalbut totallyoffthe
scale of culture.It was an experience,he said, thatcould not be framed,and thus,
breakingthroughthe verynotion of frame,it was one thatrevealed to him the
and "pictorialism"of all painting."The experience on the road,"
insignificance
he says, "was somethingmapped out but not sociallyrecognized. I thoughtto
myself,it ought to be clear that'sthe end of art." And what we now know with
hindsighton thisstatementis thatTony Smith's "end of art" coincided withindeed, conceptuallyundergirded-the beginningof Minimalism.

4.

See Artin America(March and April 1990).

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The Cultural Logic of theLate CapitalistMuseum

The second remark,the one by Tom Krens,was made to me in an interview

and also involves a revelation on a turnpike,,the Autobahn just outside of
Cologne.5 It was a November day in 1985, and havingjust seen a spectacular
gallerymade froma convertedfactorybuilding,he was drivingby large numbers
of otherfactories.Suddenly,he said, he thoughtof the huge abandoned factories
in his own neighborhoodof North Adams, and he had the revelationof MASS
he described thisrevelationas transcendinganythinglike
MoCA.6 Significantly,
the mere availabilityof real estate. Rather, he said, it announced an entire
change in--to use a word he seems extremelyfond of- discourse.A profound
and sweepingchange, thatis, withinthe veryconditionswithinwhichart itselfis
understood. Thus, what was revealed to him was not only the tininess and
inadequacy of most museums,but that the encyclopedicnature of the museum
was "over." What museumsmustnow do, he said he realized,was to selecta very
few artistsfromthe vast array of modernistaestheticproductionand to collect
and show these fewin depth over the fullamount of space it mighttake to really
experience the cumulativeimpact of a given oeuvre. The discursivechange he
was imaginingis, we mightsay, one that switchesfromdiachronyto synchrony.
The encyclopedic museum is intent on telling a story,by arrayingbefore its
visitora particularversionof the historyof art. The synchronicmuseum--if we
can call it that-would forego historyin the name of a kind of intensityof
experience, an aestheticcharge that is not so much temporal(historical)as it is
now radicallyspatial,the model forwhich,in Krens's own account, was, in fact,
Minimalism.It is Minimalism,Krens says in relation to his revelation,that has
viewers,look at art: the demands
reshaped the way we, as late twentieth-century
we now put on it; our need to experience it along withits interactionwiththe
space in whichit exists;our need to have a cumulative,serial,crescendo towards
the intensityof thisexperience; our need to have more and at a larger scale. It
was Minimalism,then, that was part of the revelationthat only at the scale of
somethinglike MASS MoCA could thisradical revisionof the verynatureof the
museum take place.
Within the logic of this second bridge, there is somethingthat connects
Minimalism--and at a very deep level--to a certain kind of analysis of the
modern museum, one that announces its radical revision.

The interviewtook place May 7, 1990.

5.
6.
MASS MoCA (The MassachusettsMuseum of ContemporaryArt),a project to transformthe
750,000 square feetof factoryspace formerlyoccupied by Sprague Technologies Inc. intoa museum
complex (that would not only consistof gargantuanexhibitiongalleries,but also a hotel and retail
shops), proposed to the MassachusettsLegislature by Krens and granted fundingin a special bill
potentiallyunderwritinghalf its costs with a $35 million bond issue, is now nearing the end of a
feasibilitystudy,funded out of the same bill,and being conducted by a committeechaired by Krens.
See Deborah Weisgall, "A Megamuseum in a Mill Town, The Guggenheimin Massachusetts?"New
YorkTimesMagazine (3 March 1989).

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OCTOBER

Now even from the few things I've sketched about Minimalism,there
emergesan internalcontradiction.For on the one hand thereis Krens'sacknowledgement of what could be called the phenomenological ambitions of Minimalism;and on the other,underscoredby the dilemmaof contemporaryrefabrication, Minimalism'sparticipationin a culture of seriality,of multipleswithout
originals-a culture,that is, of commodityproduction.
That firstside, it could be argued, is the aestheticbase of Minimalism,its
conceptual bedrock, what the writerof the Art in Americaarticle called its
"original meaning." This is the side of Minimalismthatdenies thatthe workof
art is an encounterbetween two previouslyfixedand complete entities:on the
one hand, the work as a repositoryof known forms-the cube or prism,for
example, as a kindof geometrica priori,the embodimentof a Platonic solid; and
on the other, the viewer as an integral,biographicallyelaborated subject, a
subject who cognitivelygrasps these formsbecause he or she knows them in
advance. Far frombeing a cube, Richard Serra's House ofCards is a shape in the
process of formingagainst the resistance,but also withthe help of the ongoing
conditionsof gravity;farfrombeing a simpleprism,Robert Morris'sL-Beamsare
threedifferentinsertionswithinthe viewer'sperceptualfieldsuch thateach new
dispositionof the form,sets up an encounterbetween the viewerand the object
whichredefinesthe shape. As Morrishimselfwrotein his "Notes on Sculpture,"
Minimalism'sambition was to leave the domain of what he called "relational
aesthetics"and to "take relationshipsout of the workand make thema function
of space, light,and the viewer's fieldof vision."7
To make the workhappen, then,on thisveryperceptualknife-edge-the
interfacebetween the work and its beholder-is on the one hand to withdraw
privilegeboth fromthe formalwholenessof the object prior to this encounter
and fromthe artistas a kind of authorialabsolute who has set the termsfor the
nature of the encounter,in advance. Indeed, the turntowardsindustrialfabrication of the workswas consciouslyconnected to thispart of Minimalism'slogic,
namely,the desire to erode the old idealistnotionsabout creativeauthority.But
on the other hand, it is to restructurethe verynotion of the viewingsubject.
It is possible to misread a descriptionof Minimalism'sdrive to produce a
kind of "death of the author" as one of creatinga now all-powerfulreader/interpreter,as when Morris writes: "The object is but one of the termsof the
neweraesthetic. . . . One is more aware thanbeforethathe himselfis establishing relationshipsas he apprehends the object fromvarious positionsand under
varyingconditionsof lightand spatial context." But, in fact,the nature of this
"he himself[who] is establishingrelationships"is also what Minimalismworksto
put in suspension.Neitherthe old Cartesiansubjectnor the traditionalbiographical subject,the Minimalistsubject- this"he himselfestablishingrelationships"
Robert Morris,"Notes on Sculpture," in G. Battcock,ed., MinimalArt,New York, Dutton,
7.
1968.

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The CulturalLogic of theLate CapitalistMuseum

-is a subjectradicallycontingenton the conditionsof the spatialfield,a subject

in the act of perwho coheres, but only provisionallyand moment-by-moment,
for
Maurice
It
is
the
instance,
Merleau-Pontydescribes
subject that,
ception.
when he writes:"But the systemof experience is not arrayed before me as if I
were God, it is lived by me froma certainpoint of view; I am not the spectator,I
am involved,and it is my involvementin a point of view which makes possible
both the finitenessof my perception and its opening out upon the complete
world as a horizon of every perception."8
In Merleau-Ponty'sconceptionof thisradicallycontingentsubject,caught
within
the horizon of every perception,there is, as we know, an important
up
furthercondition. For Merleau-Pontyis not merelydirectingus towards what
could be called a "lived perspective"; he is calling on us to acknowledge the
primacyof the "lived bodilyperspective."For it is the immersionof the body in
the world, the fact that it has a frontand a back, a leftand a rightside, that
establishesat what Merleau-Pontycalls a level of "preobjective experience" a
kind of internalhorizon whichservesas the preconditionof the meaningfulness
of the perceptual world. It is thus the body as the preobjective ground of all
experience of the relatednessof objects thatwas the primary"world" explored
ofPerception.
by the Phenomenology
Minimalismwas indeed committedto this notion of "lived bodilyperspective," thisidea of a perceptionthat would break withwhat it saw as the decorporealized and thereforebloodless, algebraicized conditionof abstractpainting
in which a visualitycut loose from the rest of the bodily sensoriumand now
remade in the model of modernism's drive towards absolute autonomy had
serialized
become the verypictureof an entirelyrationalized,instrumentalized,
of
on
the
the
Its
insistence
understood
as
a bodily
immediacy
experience,
subject.
as
a
kind
of
release
from
the
forward
intended
march
of
was
modernimmediacy,
ist paintingtowardsan increasinglypositivistabstraction.
In thissense, Minimalism'sreformulationof the subjectas radicallycontingent is, even though it attacks older idealist notions of the subject, a kind of
Utopian gesture. This is because the Minimalistsubject is in this verydisplacement returned to its body, regrounded in a kind of richer,denser subsoil of
experience than the paper-thinlayer of an autonomous visualitythat had been
the goal of optical painting.And thus thismove is, we could say,compensatory,
an act of reparationsto a subject whose everydayexperience is one of increasing
isolation,reification,specialization,a subject who lives under the conditionsof
advanced industrialcultureas an increasinglyinstrumentalized
being. It is to this
in
of
that
an
act
resistance
to
the
Minimalism,
subject
serializing,stereotyping,
and banalizingof commodityproduction,holds out a promiseof some instantof
Maurice Merleau-Ponty,Phenomenology
8.
ofPerception,trans.Colin Smith,London, Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1962, p. 304.

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OCTOBER

10

bodily plenitude in a gesture of compensation that we recognize as deeply

aesthetic.
But even if Minimalismseems to have been conceived in specificresistance
to the fallenworld of mass culture- withits disembodied media images-and
of consumerculture--with its banalized, commodifiedobjects--in an attempt
to restorethe immediacyof experience,the door it opened onto "refabrication"
nonetheless was one that had the potential to let that whole world of late
capitalistproductionrightback in.9 Not only was the factoryfabricationof the
objects fromplans a switchfromartisanalto industrialtechnology,but the very
choice of materialsand of shapes rang withthe overtonesof industry.No matter
thatplexiglassand aluminumand styrofoamwere meant to destroythe interiority signalled by the old materialsof sculpturelike wood or stone. These were
nonethelessthe signifiersof late 20th-century
commodityproduction,cheap and
expendable. No matterthat the simple geometrieswere meant to serve as the
vehicles of perceptual immediacy.These were as well the operators of those
rationalized forms susceptible to mass production and the generalized ones
adaptable as corporate logos.'0 And most crucially,the Minimalistresistanceto
traditionalcompositionwhichmeantthe adoption of a repetitive,additiveaggregation of form- Donald Judd's "one thing after another"- partakes very
deeply of that formalconditionthat can be seen to structureconsumercapitalism: the condition,that is, of seriality.For the serial principleseals the object
away from any condition that could possibly be thought to be original and
consignsit to a worldof simulacra,of multipleswithoutoriginals,just as the serial
formalso structuresthe object withina systemin which it makes sense only in
relationto other objects,objects whichare themselvesstructuredby relationsof
artificiallyproduced difference.Indeed, in the world of commoditiesit is this
differencethat is consumed."
Now how, we mightask, is it possiblethata movementthatwishedto attack
and technologizationsomehowalwaysalreadycarriedthe codes
commodification
of those very conditions? How is it that immediacy was always potentially
undermined- infected,we could say- with its opposite? For it is this always
This analysisof the contradictionsinternalto Minimalismhas already been brilliantlyargued
9.
by Hal Fosterin his genealogicalstudyof Minimalism.See Hal Foster,"The Crux of Minimalism,"in
Art: 1945-1986, Los Angeles, The Museum of ConIndividuals,A SelectedHistoryofContemporary
temporaryArt, 1986. His argumentthere, that Minimalismsimultaneouslycompletes and breaks
withmodernism,announcingitsend, and his discussionof the way much of postmodernismin both
the critiqueof the representationof the subject)and its
itscriticalmodes (the critiqueof institutions,
collaborative ones (the transavant-garde,simulation)is nascent withinthe Minimalistsyntax,both
spatialand productive,is a complex articulationof the logic of Minimalismand anticipatesmuch of
what I am sayingabout its history.
10. This argumentwas already suggestedby Art & Language's critiqueof Minimalism.See Carl
Beveridge and Ian Burn, "Donald Judd May We Talk?," The Fox, no. 2 (1972). That Minimalism
should have been welcomed into corporate collectionscame fullcircle in the 1980s when its forms
served as the, perhaps unwilling,basis of much of postmodernarchitecture.
11.
Foster,p. 180.

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The CulturalLogic of theLate CapitalistMuseum

11

already that is being tapped in the currentcontroversyabout refabrication.So,

we could ask, how is it thatan art that insistedso hard on specificity
could have
within
it
the
of
its
violation?
logic
already programmed
But thiskind of paradox is not only common in the historyof modernism,
whichis to say the historyof art in the era of capital; it could be said to be of the
verynature of modernistart's relationto capital,a relationin which,in its very
resistanceto a particularmanifestationof capital--to technology,say, or commodification,or the reificationof the subject of mass production--the artist
produces an alternativeto thatphenomenonwhichcan also be read as a function
of it, another version,although possiblymore ideated or rarified,of the very
thingagainst which he or she was reacting. FredricJameson,who is intenton
tracingthis capital-logicas it worksitselfout in modernistart, describesit, for
example, in Van Gogh's clothingof the drab peasant world around him in an
he says,"is to be seen
hallucinatorysurfaceof color. This violenttransformation,
as a Utopian gesture:as an act of compensationwhichends up producinga whole
new Utopian realm of the senses, or at least of that supreme sense--sight, the
visual,the eye- whichit now reconstitutesforus as a semi-autonomousspace in
its own right."'2 But even as it does this,it in fact imitatesthe verydivisionof
labor that is performedin the body of capital, thereby"becoming some new
fragmentationof the emergent sensorium which replicates the specializations
and divisionsof capitalistlife at the same time that it seeks in preciselysuch
fragmentationa desperate Utopian compensationfor them."'3
What is exposed in this analysisis then the logic of what could be called
cultural reprogrammingor what Jameson himselfcalls "cultural revolution."
And thisis to say thatwhilethe artistmightbe creatinga Utopian alternativeto,
or compensationfor,a certain nightmareinduced by industrializationor commodification,he is at the verysame timeprojectingan imaginaryspace which,if
it is shaped somehowby the structuralfeaturesof thatsame nightmare,worksto
produce the possibilityfor its receiver fictivelyto occupy the territoryof what
willbe a next,more advanced level of capital. Indeed, it is the theoryof cultural
revolutionthat the imaginaryspace projected by the artistwill not only emerge
fromthe formalconditionsof the contradictionsof a given momentof capital,
but will prepare its subjects--its readers or viewers-to occupy a futurereal
world which the work of art has already brought them to imagine, a world
restructurednot through the present but through the next moment in the
historyof capital.
An example of this,we could say, would be the great unitesd'habitationof
the InternationalStyleand Le Corbusier,whichrose above an older, fallencity
fabricto projecta powerful,futuristic
alternativeto it,an alternativecelebrating
12.
13.

Jameson,p. 59.
Ibid.

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OCTOBER

12

the potentialcreativeenergystoredwithinthe individualdesigner.But insofaras

those projects simultaneouslydestroyedthe older urban networkof neighborhoods with their heterogeneous cultural patterns,they prepared the ground
preciselyfor that anonymous culture of suburban sprawl and shopping-center
homogeneitythat theywere specificallyworkingto counter.
So, withMinimalism,the potentialwas alwaystherethatnot onlywould the
objectbe caught up in the logic of commodityproduction,a logic that would
but thatthe subjectprojectedby Minimalismalso would
overwhelmitsspecificity,
be reprogrammed.Which is to say that the Minimalistsubject of "lived bodily
experience"- unballastedbypast knowledgeand coalescingin the verymoment
of its encounterwiththe object- could, if pushedjust a littlefarther,break up
entirelyinto the utterlyfragmented,postmodernsubject of contemporarymass
culture. It could even be suggestedthat by prizing loose the old ego-centered
- albeit
logicallysubject of traditional art, Minimalism unintentionally
for
that
fragmentation.
prepares
And it was thatfragmentedsubject,I would submit,thatlay in waitforthe
viewerto the Panza Exhibitionin Paris- not the subject of lived bodilyimmediacy of 1960s Minimalism,but the dispersedsubject awash in a maze of signsand
simulacraof late 1980s postmodernism.This was notjust a functionof the way
the objects tended to be eclipsedby the emanationsfromthemselvesthatseemed
to stand apart from their corporeal beings like so many blinkingsigns-the
shimmeringwaves of the floorpieces punctuatingthe groundplan,the luminous
exhalations of the light pieces washing the corners of rooms one had not yet
entered. It was also a functionof the new centralitygiven to James Turrell, an
extremelyminor figurefor Minimalismin the late 1960s and early 1970s, but
one who playsan importantrole in the reprogrammationof Minimalismforthe
late 1980s. The Turrell piece, itselfan exercise in sensoryreprogramming,is a
functionof the way a barelyperceptibleluminous fieldin frontof one appears
gradually to thickenand solidify,not by revealing or bringinginto focus the
surfacewhichprojectsthiscolor, a surfacewhichwe as viewersmightbe said to
perceive,but ratherbyconcealingthe vehicleof the color and therebyproducing
the illusion that it is the fielditselfwhich is focusing,that it is the very object
facingone that is doing the perceivingfor one.
Now it is this derealized subject-a subject that no longer does its own
perceivingbut is involvedin a dizzyingeffortto decode signsthatemerge from
withina no longer mappable or knowabledepth- thathas become the focusof
many analyses of postmodernism.And this space, which is grandiloquentbut
somehow no longer masterableby the subject, seeming to surpass the reach of
of
understandinglike an inscrutableemblemof the multinationalinfrastructures
informationtechnologyor of capitaltransfer,is oftenreferredto in such analyses
as "hyperspace." It, in turn,is a space thatsupportsan experience thatJameson
calls "the hystericalsublime." Which is to say that preciselyin relation to the
what could be called the waning of
suppressionof the older
subjectivity-in

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The Cultural Logic of the Late Capitalist Museum

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JamesTurrell.Blood Lust. 1989.

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14

OCTOBER

affect--thereis "a strangecompensatorydecorativeexhilaration."'14 In place of

the older emotionsthere is now an experience thatmustproperlybe termedan
"intensity"-a free-floatingand impersonal feeling dominated by a peculiar
kind of euphoria.
The revisionof Minimalismsuch thatit addressesor even worksto produce
that new fragmentedand technologizedsubject, such that it constructsnot an
experience of itselfbut some other euphoricallydizzy sense of the museum as
hyperspace,this revisionaryconstructionof Minimalismexploits, as we have
seen, whatwas alwayspotentialwithinMinimalism.'5But it is a revisionthatis, as
well, happening at a specificmoment in history.It is happening in 1990 in
tandem with powerfulchanges in how the museum itselfis now being reprogrammed or reconceptualized.

The writerof "Selling the Collection" acknowledged that the Guggenheim's deaccessioningwas partof a largerstrategyto reconceivethe museumand
that Krens himselfhas describedthisstrategyas somehow motivatedor justified
by the way Minimalismrestructuresthe aesthetic"discourse." What, we might
now ask, is the nature of thatlargerstrategy,and how is Minimalismbeing used
to serve as its emblem?
One of the argumentsmade by analystsof postmoderncultureis thatin its
switch from what could be called an era of industrialproduction to one of
commodityproduction--an era, that is, of the consumer society,or the information society,or the media society- capital has not somehow been magically
transcended.Which is to say,we are not in eithera "postindustrialsociety"or a
"postideologicalera." Indeed, theywould argue, we are in an even purerformof
capital in which industrialmodes can be seen to reach into spheres (such as
leisure,sport,and art) previouslysomewhatseparated fromthem. In thewords
of the Marxist economist Ernest Mandel: "Far from representinga 'postindustrialsociety'late capitalismthus constitutesgeneralizeduniversalindustrializationforthe firsttimein history.Mechanization,standardization,over-specializationand parcellizationof labor, whichin the past determinedonlythe realm of
14.
Ibid., p. 61.
The various 1970s projects,organizedby Heiner Friedrichand sponsoredby the Dia Founda15.
tion,whichset up permanentinstallations-like de Maria's EarthRoomor hisBrokenKilometer-had
the effectof reconsecratingcertainurban spaces to a detached contemplationof theirown "empty"
presence. Which is to say that in the relationshipbetween the work and its context,these spaces
themselvesincreasinglyemerge as the focus of the experience,one of an inscrutablebut suggestive
sense of impersonal,corporatelikepower to penetrateart-worldlocales and to rededicate them to
it was Friedrichwho began, in the mid-1970s, to
another kind of nexus of control. Significantly,
promote the work of James Turrell (he is also the manager, for the Dia Foundation, of Turrell's
mammothRoden Crater).

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The CulturalLogic oftheLate CapitalistMuseum

15

commodityproductionin actual industry,now penetrateintoall sectorsof social

life."'6
As just one example of thishe gives the Green Revolution,or the massive
of agriculturethroughthe introductionof machinesand chemiindustrialization
cals. Justas in any other industrialization,the old productiveunits are broken
up-the farmfamilyno longer makes its own tools, food, and clothing-to be
replaced by specialized labor in which each functionis now independent and
must be connected through the mediating link of trade. The infrastructure
needed to support this connection will now be an internationalsystemboth of
trade and of credit. What makes this expanded industrializationpossible, he
adds, is the overcapitalization(or noninvestedsurpluscapital)thatis the hallmark
of late capitalism. It is this surplus that is unlocked and set in motion by the
falling rate of profit.And it in turn accelerates the process of transitionto
monopolycapitalism.
Now noninvested surplus capital is exactly one way of describing the
holdings- both in land and in art-of museums.It is the way,as we have seen,
that many museum figures(directorsand trustees)are now, in fact,describing
their collections. But the marketthey see themselvesresponding to is the art
marketand not the mass market;and the model of capitalizationthey have in
mind is the "dealership" and not industry.
Writersabout the Guggenheimhave alreadybecome suspiciousthatit is the
one exception in all this-an exception, most would agree, that will be an
extremelyseductivepatternforothersto followonce itslogic becomes clear. The
New YorkTimesMagazine writerof the profile on MASS MoCA was, indeed,
struckby the way Tom Krens constantlyspoke not of the museum but of the
"museum industry,"describingit as "overcapitalized," in need of "mergersand
acquisitions"and of "asset management."And further,invokingthe language of
industry,he spoke of the museum's activities- itsexhibitionsand cataloguesas "product."
Now fromwhat we know fromother industrializations,
we can say that to
will require not only the break-up of older
produce this "product" efficiently
productive units-as the curator no longer operates as combined researcher,
writer,director,and producer of an exhibitionbut will be increasinglyspecialized into fillingonly one of these functions- but will entail the increased technologization(throughcomputer-baseddata systems)and centralizationof operationsat everylevel. It willalso demand the increasedcontrolof resourcesin the
formof art objects that can be cheaply and efficiently
entered into circulation.
Further,in relation to the problem of the effectivemarketingof this product,
therewillbe the requirementof a largerand largersurfaceover whichto sell the
ErnestMandel, Late Capitalism,London, Verso, 1978, p. 387, as cited in Foster,p. 179; and in
16.
Jameson,"Periodizing the '60s," TheIdeologiesofTheory,Vol. II, Minneapolis,Universityof Minnesota Press, 1988, p. 207.

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16

OCTOBER

product in order to increase what Krens himselfspeaks of as "marketshare." It

takes no genius to realize that the three immediaterequisitesof thisexpansion
are 1) larger inventory(the Guggenheim'sacquisition of three hundred works
fromthe Panza collectionis a firststep in thisdirection);2) more physicaloutlets
throughwhichto sell the product(the Salzburg and Venice/Dogana projectsare
potentialwaysof realizingthis,as would be MASS MoCA);'7 and 3) leveraging
the collection (which in this case most specificallydoes not mean sellingit, but
rathermovingit into the creditsector,or the circulationof capital;'8 the collection will thus be pressed to travel as one form of indebtedness; classically,
mortgagingthe collectionwould be the more directformof leveraging).19And it
17.
Projects at differentstages of realization include a Salzburg Guggenheim, in which the
Austrian Governmentwould presumablypay for a new museum (designed by Hans Holein) and
endow its operating expenses in return for a New York Guggenheim-managedprogram,part of
whichwould entailthe circulationof the Guggenheimcollectioninto Salzburg. In addition,thereare
negotiationsfora Venice Guggenheimin the quartersof the formerCustoms House (the Dogana).
18. That as part of its industrializationthe Guggenheimis willingto deaccession notjust minor
objects but masterpiecesis a point made by "Selling the Collection," where ProfessorGert Schiffis
quoted as sayingof the deaccessioned Kandinsky,"It reallywas a centerpieceof the collection- they
could have sold almost anythingbut not that," and formerdirector,now trustee,Tom Messer, is
described as "uncomfortablewith the transaction"(p. 130). Another detail in this report is the
extraordinaryspread between Sotheby's estimateon thisKandinsky($10-15 million)and its actual
sale price ($20.9 million). In fact, on the three works auctioned by the Guggenheim, Sotheby's
underestimatedthe sales by more than 40 percent.This raises some questionsabout "asset management" in a domain, like the Guggenheim's,of increasingspecializationof professionalroles. For it is
clear that neitherthe museum's staffnor its directorhad a grip on the realitiesof the market,and
relyingon Sotheby's "expertise" (not, of course disinterested),they probably deaccessioned one
more work than theyneeded to in order to accomplishtheirtarget,whichwas the purchase of the
Panza collection. It is also clear-not only from Schiff'scomment but also fromone by William
Rubin to the effectthatin thirtyyearsof experience he had never seen a comparable Kandinskyfor
sale, and thatchances are thatin the next thirtyyearstherewillnot be another- thatthe separation
of curatorialfrommanagerialskillsis wildlyskewingthe museum'sjudgment in the favorto those
who standto profit- in the formof feesand percentagesof sales- fromany "deal" thattakesplace:
auctioneers,dealers, etc.
In August 1990, the Guggenheim Museum, throughthe agency of The Trust for Cultural
19.
Resources of The City of New York (about which more later), issued $55 million of tax-exempt
bonds toJ. P. Morgan Securities(who willpresumablyremarketthemto the public). This moneyis to
be used for the museum's physicalexpansion in New York City: the annex to the presentbuilding,
the restorationand undergroundexpansionof the presentbuilding,and the purchaseof a warehouse
in midtownManhattan.Counting intereston these bonds, the museum will,in the course of fifteen
years,have to pay out $115 millionto serviceand retirethisdebt.
The collateralforthesebonds is curious,since the issuingdocumentreads: "None of the assets
of the [Guggenheim]Foundation are pledged forpaymentof the Bonds." It goes on to specifythat
the museum's endowmentis legallyunavailable to be used to meet the obligationsof the debt and
that "certain worksin the Foundation's collectionare subject to express sale prohibitionsor other
or purchasecontracts."That such restrictions
restrictions
pursuantto the applicable giftinstruments
apply only to "certain works" and not to all worksis also somethingto which I will return.
In lightof the fact that no collateral is pledged in case of the museum's inabilityto meet its
obligationson thisdebt, one mightwell wonder about the basis on whichMorgan Securities(as well
as its partnerin thistransaction,the Swiss Bank Corporation)agreed to purchase these bonds. This
basis is clearlythreefold.First,the Guggenheimis projectingits abilityto raise the moneyit needs
(roughly$7 millionper yearover and above itscurrent[thedate in the bond issuancedocumentis for

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The Cultural Logic oftheLate CapitalistMuseum

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also does not stretchthe imaginationtoo much to realize thatthisindustrialized

museum will have much more in common with other industrializedareas of
leisure- Disneyland say- than it will with the older, preindustrialmuseum.
Thus it will be dealing with mass markets,rather than art markets,and with
simulacralexperience ratherthan aestheticimmediacy.
Which brings us back to Minimalismand the way it is being used as the
aesthetic rationale for the transformationI am describing.The industrialized
museum has a need for the technologized subject, the subject in search not of
affectbut of intensities,the subject who experiences its fragmentationas euphoria,the subjectwhose fieldof experienceis no longerhistory,but space itself:
that hyperspacewhich a revisionistunderstandingof Minimalismwill use it to
unlock.

FY 1988] annual expenses of $11.5 million [on which it was runninga deficitof about 9 percent,
which is extremely
high for this kind of institution])through,on the one hand, a $30 millionfund
driveand, on the other,added revenue streamsdue to itsexpansion of plant,program,markets,etc.
Since its obligationis $115 million,the fund drive,even if successful,will leave over $86 millionto
raise. Second, if the Guggenheim'splans for increasingrevenue (added gate, retail sales, memberships,corporatefunding,gifts,plus "renting"itscollectionto itssatellitemuseums,among others)by
the above amount (or 70 percentabove itscurrentannual income) do not workout as projected,the
next line of defense the bankerscan fallback on willbe the abilityof membersof the Guggenheim's
board of trusteesto cover the debt. This would involvea personal willingnessto pay thatno trustee,
individually,is legallyrequired to do. Third, ifthe firsttwo possibilitiesfailand defaultis threatened,
the collection(minus,of course, "certain works"), thoughit is not pledged, is clearlyavailable as an
"asset" to be used for debt repayment.
In asking financialofficersof various tax-exemptinstitutionsto evaluate this undertaking,I
have been advised thatit is, indeed, a "high-risk"venture.And I have also gleaned somethingof the
role of The Trust for Cultural Resources of The Cityof New York.
or to serve as the
Many stateshave agencies set up to lend moneyto tax-exemptinstitutions,
mediumthroughwhichmoniesfrombond drivesare deliveredto such institutions,
as is the case with
The Trust for Cultural Resources. But unlike The Trust forCultural Resources, these agencies are
required to review the bond proposals in order to assess theirviability.The review carried out by
agency employees is clearly made by people not associated with the institutionsthemselves.The
Trust forCulturalResources,althoughit brokersthe moneyat the behestof the governmentlike the
stateagencies,has no staffto reviewproposalsand thereforehas no role in vettingthe bond requests.
What it seems to do insteadis to give the proposal itsbona fides.Given the factthatthe membersof
the trust are also major figuresof other cultural institutions(Donald Marron, for example, is
presidentof the board of trusteesof The Museum of Modern Art), the trust'sown trusteesare, in
fact,potentialborrowers.

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