A plurality of tongues

by Daniel Birnbaum

A museum is not an object, it's an activity. Exhibitions are acts, as are concerts, readings, and performances. To direct a museum is different from staging an individual exhibition. To direct a museum is to curate the entire program, to establish links between shows, to create accords and tensions between art from different places and periods, between disciplines and approaches. The expanding collection is the foundation and also a battery that energizes everything else. This book highlights some of the thematic threads that run through the programs of Moderna Museet. An attentiveness...