ABSTRACT
Interrelations between public art and museums were particularly noteworthy in the case of the setting of the enormous fox terrier in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sidney and the display of the huge spider in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London. The starting point would entail a critical attitude, generally assumed not only in thinking and in art but also in many more aspects of life. The other side of the coin, a return to monumental figuration, would generally be favoured by populist post-modern cultural policies whose investments in museums and/or public art are dictated by publicity returns deriving from the image they cast. Beaubourg failed to become a new museological paradigm, though it would be quite hard to determine what museum models were marking new standards at the turn of the millennium.
