A New Museum

In the contemporary digital era, museums face the urgency to evolve and adapt by embracing and integrating new technologies. While the latter function as innovative tools and platforms for the art world, they simultaneously give rise to new media artworks that demand new frames of presentation, exhibition, and mediation. As such, it can be said that the technological and digital developments of recent years not only create new possibilities for the arts but also introduce disruptions and challenges for cultural institutions. New media art reshapes the relationships between art, the public, and museums, primarily through its technicity, i.e., digital materialities, and objectualities that largely differ from more traditional artworks. Moreover, it inaugurates different forms of mediation and reception, based on participation, interaction, and immersion, while suggesting a different configuration and use of the gallery space. Consequently, standard museum frames, namely the modernist white cube, no longer apply, and new exhibition models and architectures must be created. This, alongside the new dynamics introduced by digital technology, leads to a reconfiguration of the museum’s structure. At the same time, new exhibition platforms emerge, that are efficient and somewhat autonomous from institutions, such as the internet. As a result, there is a rupture with the understanding of the museum as the only, or the main, space for the arts. Within this context and drawing on André Malraux’s concept of the “imaginary museum”—a museum without walls—this article elaborates on what the new museum of the digital era might be, and how it can structurally and conceptually evolve in response to digital transformation. It proposes a museum frame that is hybrid and applicable to the current technological context while aiming to contribute to the studies in this area.