The Museum Is Dead. Long Live the Storage Room. Smithsonian controversy.
A few months ago, I started thinking about one dilemma:
How can art still make our lives better — and what is the mission of traditional art today — in an era when AI can generate whatever anyone wants in seconds?
And the only honest answer I’ve found is this:
Art must capture the moment through the individual lens of an artist to tell the truth.
It must preserve emotion, not just data.
A real person’s feeling, frozen on canvas, for future generations to touch — not just scroll. So they can understand how people actually felt.
Not how an algorithm says they lived.
Museums and galleries should be helping with that mission.
That’s cool.
Awesome.
And then… today, I read this:
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History this month removed a label referring to President Trump’s two impeachments, a move museum officials said was part of a review of the institution’s content for bias.
The temporary label was added in 2021 to an exhibition about the American presidency. The label also included information about the impeachments of former Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, as well as about former President Richard M. Nixon, who faced possible impeachment before resigning from office.
The removal of the label, which was reported earlier by The Washington Post, came after the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, which governs the institution, recently committed to reviewing its content under pressure from the Trump administration. Mr. Trump has called for a more positive framing of the country’s history in Smithsonian museums, and tried to fire the director of the National Portrait Gallery, accusing her of being political.
Seriously? Okay.
You — museums and galleries — allowed AI to train on your entire collections without even consulting the art world.
And now you’re actively rewriting history to make it more “comfortable”?
Sure, museums have always had their own internal dictators — curators.
But even the most powerful curator can be fired when galleries are empty and critics turn cruel.
A few months ago, I asked:
Why do we even need museums and galleries anymore?
A few weeks ago, I asked it again.
And again.
Today, I can finally answer:
We don’t need them.
We need a warehouse.
A storage unit for art.
Nothing more.
Somewhere to keep the works safe until…
Oh shit.
...your worst artist and best friend,
How can art still make our lives better — and what is the mission of traditional art today — in an era when AI can generate whatever anyone wants in seconds?
And the only honest answer I’ve found is this:
Art must capture the moment through the individual lens of an artist to tell the truth.
It must preserve emotion, not just data.
A real person’s feeling, frozen on canvas, for future generations to touch — not just scroll. So they can understand how people actually felt.
Not how an algorithm says they lived.
Museums and galleries should be helping with that mission.
That’s cool.
Awesome.
And then… today, I read this:
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History this month removed a label referring to President Trump’s two impeachments, a move museum officials said was part of a review of the institution’s content for bias.
The temporary label was added in 2021 to an exhibition about the American presidency. The label also included information about the impeachments of former Presidents Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, as well as about former President Richard M. Nixon, who faced possible impeachment before resigning from office.
The removal of the label, which was reported earlier by The Washington Post, came after the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, which governs the institution, recently committed to reviewing its content under pressure from the Trump administration. Mr. Trump has called for a more positive framing of the country’s history in Smithsonian museums, and tried to fire the director of the National Portrait Gallery, accusing her of being political.
Seriously? Okay.
You — museums and galleries — allowed AI to train on your entire collections without even consulting the art world.
And now you’re actively rewriting history to make it more “comfortable”?
Sure, museums have always had their own internal dictators — curators.
But even the most powerful curator can be fired when galleries are empty and critics turn cruel.
A few months ago, I asked:
Why do we even need museums and galleries anymore?
A few weeks ago, I asked it again.
And again.
Today, I can finally answer:
We don’t need them.
We need a warehouse.
A storage unit for art.
Nothing more.
Somewhere to keep the works safe until…
Oh shit.
...your worst artist and best friend,
hEhe and my contemporary art criticism
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All text, photo, and video materials belong to their owners and are for demonstration purposes only. Please do not use them in commercial projects.
