"The future of museums is inside our homes": lines of subjectification, (auto)biographies and micro-narratives in contemporary museum practices

Abstract

Following the directions given by Orhan Pamuk through the Museum of Innocence in Istanbul (2012) and the coordinates provided in his Modest manifesto for museums (2012), the museum is fully revealed as a complex narrative device (Jean-Loup Amselle), an open space of (auto)biographical writings and lines of subjectification, of small narrations and ordinary stories. This proposal crosses artistic practice and exhibition writings, constructs museum storytelling (Bedford) that puts the “stories” before the “History”, the “Novel” before the “Epic”, the “Houses” before the “Monuments”. In this way an articulated map of intersections between small museums that showcase the biographies of single individuals and precious “domestic museums” (Pamuk) - such as the House Museums and the Artist's Studio Museums - is drawn. Brigh examples of this new trend are the House Museum Mario Praz, the House Museum Ettore Guatelli, the Atelier of Giorgio Morandi and the Museum Hermann Nitsch, as well as the research of artists such as Christian Boltanski, Studio Azzurro and Paolo Riolzi that with the fascinating project Vetrinetta (2014) told the lives of people exposing in the museum the showcases of their homes. This essay aims to examine, through the models indicated, the forms of this confluence between public and private in the museum space and to analyze the critical perspectives of this tendency in the contemporary museological debate.