McCulture or The Sleep of Globalization Produces Monsters

There has been a controversy in the last months: Barcelona will open, now definitely, a branch of the St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum, near the city port, next to the Hotel Vela. Looks like good news. The Hermitage brand will give reputation to the city and more tourist will come delighting to take pictures with the beautiful architecture and buying F.C. Barcelona T-shirts and souvenirs. But what will exactly happen? Which will be the reality for the city? On one hand part of the city founding will be for that new museum, reducing the amount that would be for other museums like MACBA (Barcelona's Museum of Contemporary Art) or MNAC (National Museum of Catalan Art); on the other hand those ones will lose visitors because, if now already the city visitors go first to the Pedrera and Sagrada Familia and visit, only if they have time, the Fundació Miró o MNAC, now with an Hermitage in the city they will have even less time to visit this “second class” museums – second class according to their international diffusion. Hence we can think: is it really necessary? Does Barcelona need an Hermitage branch? Couldn't the MNAC had been used to show the temporary exhibitions that will come? Because it seems that this is the only function that this new museum is going to have. The thing is that it sound so well to say “Hermitage Barcelona” as it sound to say “Hermitage Amsterdam” or “Hermitage Ferrara”. Franchises like Starbucks or McDonald's, which every town wants to have one because people visits it and they know what to expect. Beloved sons of globalization, where the artworks move around stereotyped museums, with an equal museographic model in each branch – like all the Starbucks have the same seats, giving to the visitor this security of space acknowledge.

Project for the Hermitage branch in Barcelona

But on the other hand, we must consider that the world is changing and increasingly we have to accept that museums, art centres and other institutions will acquire, increasingly, pastime and marketing aspects. However is not bad at all to think about art as a pastime. That would maybe offend the most conservative, but as we have said the world is changing and with it also people and hobbies. Benjamin already announced that with the aura's fall: it's art as a mass product what it's successful, and an Hermitage branch in Barcelona will make the city grow. But let's take a look at this new museum's placement: next to the Hotel Vela, in a luxurious complex where tourists will take the chance to have some lunch or even book a room at high prices. In the case of Barcelona this is just a fledgling seed, but this could make us think on extremer cases like Abu Dhabi's complexes. Art will be again part of the elites? After all the efforts the Nouvelle Muséologie has taken in socialize the museum making it closer to the humble classes, now we are taking giant footsteps backwards to the big “monsters” -Louvre, Guggenheim...- inside luxurious complexes with golf courses, swimming pools and five stars hotels. Not everyone has the sources to visit that kind of complexes and visit those museums. As some already said, human beens move forward in technology but not in humanity. Oh! If Riviére could see us...

Guiomar Sánchez
@guiomar_sp