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

Is the white cube the new kitsch? Once a radical display model, the white cube has become a globally standardised aesthetic formula reproduced without critical reflection. Jeff Koons, Tulips, The Broad Museum, Los Angeles, 2016.

An installation view shows a shiny, brightly colored sculpture of oversized metallic balloon-like flowers displayed in a white museum gallery.

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
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