The Crisis of the Museum Is the Crisis of the White Cube

Tate Modern, London—from modernist temple to spectacular theme park, 2018.

A bright museum gallery shows visitors looking at framed text-based artworks on a white wall, with one blurred visitor passing in the foreground.

What’s the use of decolonizing the canon, decolonizing the collection and decolonizing the program if we don’t decolonize the white cube itself—the container that still structures how art is seen, experienced, classified and legitimized?

The Crisis of the Museum Is the Crisis of the White Cube