Critical Digital: Museums and their Postdigital Circumstance

During the “digital era”, the modus operandi of museums – how museums, their collections and the cultural values they exhibit are understood and activated – has been challenged. The digital transformation that has occurred over the past quarter of a century has unfolded as a series of continuous disruptions, each characterised by their modern, postmodern and metamodern contexts. Given the tumultuous experience of cultural organisations across the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, this text serves as an initial platform for re-evaluating just how critical the relationship between museums and digital technology is today. It reflects on how these exceptional circumstances might be reasoned within the continually evolving relationship between art, museums and the socio-cultural and technological conditions under which they coexist.