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What would it mean to create a museum of art that houses discourse rather than objects? And positions on art and the modern rather than modern art itself? For many in the museum world, this would be the ultimate travesty, the betrayal of the object, and the end of art as Hegel predicted. In the Discursive Museum, a 2001 symposium held in Vienna, artists, museum curators, and scholars discussed the future of art in a context in which the material object is rapidly vanishing and being replaced by installations that are ephemeral or cannot “endure the test of time,” in which museum visits are more about the large and exciting architecture of the space rather than about the intimacy of its contents, and in which constant talk replaces silent contemplation of art.1 In his opening remarks, Peter Noever stated: “The museum as a place for communicating art is a space where various forms of verbal expression encounter each other. Progressively, it is also a place where such forms are born. . . . One could even say that the museum is a specific configuration of discourses.”2 However , many of the participants seemed to ask the question, “Must the museum be so verbal?” Scholars such as James Cuno and Hans Belting argued against the discursive and the ephemeral in favor of museums that ask the public to meaningfully engage in art, to physically visit a place that is not virtual, “exciting ,” or fast-paced in order to slowly and quietly reflect on art objects themselves .3 The title of a dialogue between artist Gerhard Merz and art historian Herbert Molderings went even further, provocatively declaring: “We’ll Stick 91 Four Imaginary Museums and Their Real Phantoms: Exorcising Monumental Discourse with It: Any Interference in the Soundlessness, Timelessness, Motionlessness, and Lifelessness of the True Museum Is Disrespectful.”4 Over two months, participants in the symposium met in the empty central exhibition hall of the MAK Museum (Museum for Applied Art), an institution dedicated to the display of applied and contemporary arts. As participants sat in the beautiful space, what was conspicuously missing from the discussion was the possibility or even the necessity of a discursive museum precisely because there might not be a building , a physical museum of art, or a space in which to hang visible art to be a source of inspiration to the public. What was missing from the discussion was the notion that discursive museums might be indispensable in places where real museums do not exist. In many places around the world, the art museum exists as a void, and discourse is the only trace of the institution. In describing the lack of a museum of art in Peru, Gustavo Buntinx writes: “This is a radical absence: the theme here is not the deprived museum, disadvantaged by inadequate resources, but the greater deprivation provoked by the very lack of a museum—our grand museum void.”5 As I describe at the begining of this book, the very first statement that is often made by Moroccan artists, intellectuals, and curators on the subject of Moroccan museums is that they do not exist. At no point was this void as deeply felt as in the postindependence period, when Moroccan artists and intellectuals labored for, petitioned about, and discussed the necessity of a museum of art in Morocco. Through these discussions they succeeded in creating their own imaginary museum, a discursive museum that housed not art objects but issues of great debate on art and culture: What did it mean to create modern art? Is Moroccan art the same as Islamic art? Should the artist work in service of the nation? And how does one participate in universal art movements without sacrificing the particularities of local Moroccan cultures?6 Faced with a lack of material infrastructures, artists turned to the immaterial , to discursive spaces they could control and fashion without major monetary interventions and spatial considerations: journals and newspapers. Although the state had been active in presenting a veneer of modernity through art, the discursive museum was the opposite of superficial in its treatment of modern culture. It served as a materially invisible but theoretically profound reconsideration of modern art in Moroccan society by suspending, repositioning, dissecting , and re-presenting dominant narratives. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett describes the potential of the museum to serve as a utopic space for thought: “While all utopian worlds are built out of other worlds, only better, the museum literally takes the world...

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