A brave new world

Britain: What does the museum of the future look like? Not a “museum piece”, if the heads of Britain's most famous museums have anything to do with it. Museums will become multimedia organizations as the internet transforms their relationships with visitors, they say.

“The future has to be, without question, the museum as a publisher and broadcaster,” Neil MacGregor, director of the British Museum, told guests at a recent London School of Economics event.

"The future has to be the museum as a publisher and broadcaster"

Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, said that, in the past, there had been an imperfect communication between visitors and curators. “The possibility for a greater level of communication between curators and visitors is the challenge now.”

Serota believes that, in 10 to 15 years, a limited number of people will be working in galleries. Instead, museums will employ people as commissioning editors working on material online. “The challenge,” he says, “is, to what extent do we remain authors, and in what sense do we become publishers providing a platform for international conversations?”

There will be an increasing “shaking-out", adds Serota. "A discrepancy will arise between those institutions that grasp these opportunities and those that do not.”