Chris Dercon, Director of Tate Modern in London, will discuss The Future of a Different Museum together with Vassilis Oikonomopoulos, Assistant Curator, Collections International Art, at Tate Modern.

Audience research, audience engagement together with the ensuing discourse in cultural participation are on the daily agenda of museums worldwide. If 20 years ago we achieved the democratisation of access to art along with the promotion of its dialogue, now we are striving to activate people through art. Modern and contemporary art was built on the principle: separate and shock. The new art of this century will be based on a new principle: combine and connect. Thinking along the same lines, educating or learning could then be considered as art-activity in itself.

We need to implement the idea of change, and therefore of exchange: an exchange between the art-object and our audiences, in order to produce different experiences and conversations, transforming art-objects into cultural goods.

Those commissioning bodies and architects of museums that embrace changing things which supposedly are not changing, will be the ones that lead the cultural debate, those that don’t will be well and truly left behind.

The talk will be in English.