ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the persistently changing local and global social practices within and around the museum institution from a practitioner-based viewpoint. While respecting the critical relevance of Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological work to study social inequalities and power relations, and drawing on Grayson Perry’s 2013 Reith lectures on Marcel Duchamp’s business plan for art production, the text proposes the utilisation of social theories that emerged after Bourdieu. Primarily Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory with its societal, communicative, and evolving dimensions to observe the existent nature of museums and the tastemaking dynamic of Musealisierung. The role of leadership in museums’ autopoiesis, and the internal and external structural coupling to tastemaking is discussed through a diverse range of organisational theory and practice examples, ranging from Silvia Gherardi, the gig economy, to thought leadership and cultural understanding in the museum practice in London, Berlin, Germany, India, and China. The chapterargues that the influence that museums can wield at a trans-national scale, bolstered by digitalisation, means that they can take on a significant tastemaking role. Therefore, future paradigms of soft power projection via museums as part of deploying cultural diplomacy efforts will not just come from obtaining state-of-the-art facilities and expertly trained staff with high levels of retention, but from re-thinking the museum itself. The core point here is about re-tuning the museum’s existent nature to both global and local contexts, with layers of tastemaking at work. A greater degree of Vergegenwärtigung – a contemporised realisation – of both Bourdieu’s and Luhmann’s critical thinking is key to equip museum thought leaders for the relevant decision making processes to achieve this.
