Muzej, arhitektura, čovjek: polje sukoba
Museum, Architecture, People: A Conflict Zone

Summary/Abstract: (De)contextualization is the core of museum activity. Ideology and manipulation, therefore, take a huge part of museum’s everyday work. This is not a problem at all, as long as the institution makes space for introduction of those variabilities to visitors (consumers of their directions towards museum pieces). Many conflicts arise while preparing what is going to be seen and how is it going to be seen; the problem of dealing with pieces starts with a place of the exhibition. As long as we operate with the strict division between form and function in architecture, museum buildings will be seen as mere utility or as pieces of art that tend to compete with objects inside. That “inner conflict” (between museum pieces and museum building) is still obvious at the “outer conflict” between people and museums in their complexity. Expectations that arise from both sides are showing that neither visitors nor curators know how to deal with such contradictions: is the museum place where objects are exhibited because of their value, or those objects gain their value by being put in that special place? The illusion of museum as symbiotic place in which buildings, people and objects work together in harmony is that of a dogma; admitting that it is not, thus exposing its contradictions and conflicts, is the starting point for making a museum part of the future.

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