The exhibition of architecture and the architecture of an exhibition

One of the major archaeological museums, the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, serves as an example to discuss present problems of museology. I argue that the development of museums has to be analysed from a combination of perspectives, including an historical one, that of visitors and of museum staff. In a first section, the paper outlines the history of the Pergamon Museum, including an institutional history and the larger socio–political framework. To highlight the range of possibilities of understanding, I give two readings of the museum from the viewpoints of differently oriented visitors, one colonialist, the other postmodern. I then consider current debates among curators and distinguish between two main exhibition strategies, one pragmatist, the other purist. Finally, I discuss the larger framework in which museums exist, which shows their problematic status. Using critical theory's distinction between culture industry and affirmative (elite) culture, I show that the Pergamon and other museums survive today only through an uneasy compromise between these two extreme poles of culture.