A Major Exhibition Asks What Museums Are Actually For

Museums have spent two decades arguing about representation, repatriation and relevance. What they have spent considerably less time arguing about is the more fundamental question: what is a museum actually for?

A new exhibition at one of the world’s most visited cultural institutions takes that question seriously — not as a marketing exercise but as the organising principle of a show designed, in every detail, to make visitors think.

“We wanted to create the conditions for a real conversation,” said the lead curator. “Not a comfortable one. A real one, where the answers are not obvious and the institution does not have them.”