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

Arguably the first museum exhibition on fully white walls, designed by architect Peter Behrens: “Jahrhundertausstellung deutscher Kunst” (Centenary Exhibition of German Art), Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 1906.

A black-and-white historical photograph shows a grand museum gallery with decorative walls, an ornate doorway and small framed paintings hung sparsely.

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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