If museum attendance is declining, maybe it’s time to rethink the traditional relationship between artists, museums, galleries — and the audience.
For too long, museums and galleries have positioned themselves as gatekeepers between art and viewers.
But without artists, these cultural institutions have nothing to exhibit.
So maybe it’s time to flip the narrative:
We don’t need you — and your fees cutting into artists’ profits — as much as you need us and our artworks.Sorry.
But maybe that’s where the
future of museums starts.
Not with another white cube.
Not with another curator explaining what we’re supposed to feel.
But with actual people meeting actual artists.
Because today, digital content is everywhere.
AI and art are becoming almost impossible to separate. AI can replicate styles, aesthetics, compositions — probably faster than most of us can even think about them.
But it still can’t replace one thing:
genuine human connection.And that’s something only a living, breathing artist can offer.
What if collectors, supporters and just curious people could visit artists’ studios?
Talk to them.
See where the work is actually made.
Pay a ticket price directly to the artist — supporting their work right here, right now.
Not someday after a gallery takes its cut.
Not after another institution decides whether the artist is important enough.
Right now.
Art becomes not just a product, but a relationship.And this isn’t only about cutting out the middleman.
It’s about building a different culture around contemporary art — more transparent, more intimate and more direct.
A culture where viewers aren’t passive consumers walking from wall to wall reading little labels.
They become participants.
This is also why I think
contemporary art criticism and
museum criticism matter more than ever.
Not because museums are evil.
Not because curators are useless.
But because the traditional system shouldn’t be treated as something sacred and impossible to question.
That’s what
art criticism should do.
Question the system. Question the institutions. Question the people deciding what deserves to be seen.
And maybe question whether we still need all of them in exactly the same form.
Call it
art world commentary, an art critique, or just an artist complaining on the internet.
Whatever. The question stays the same:
Who actually needs whom?Art needs people.
But more than that, people need art.
And maybe they also need artists who are present, accessible and empowered — not hidden somewhere behind galleries, institutions and curators.
...your worst artist and best friend,
hEhe and my contemporary art criticism
