The Museum of the Future

Now booking for 2023/2024

THE MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE:

“I invite you dear foreigner in my performance country to dream with me and send me your own letters imagining a better art world or rather a myriad of art worlds, coexisting in synergy with nature, radical imagination, and community—you're surrounding multiple communities. Do you have ideas to propose for a museum of the future?”

—Guillermo Gómez-Peña, An Open Letter to the Museums of the Future

On February 3, 2021, Gómez-Peña presented a performance keynote and call to action titled: An Open Letter to the Museums of the Future. The project was part of a long term collaboration between the Public Media Institute for Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 and the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum (Chicago).

As an insider/outsider artist, Gómez-Peña has had an obsession with rewriting and re-staging so-called “Western Art History” while highlighting colonial legacies of systematic exclusion, demonization and fetishization of women and BIPOC. This performance keynote (and now ongoing project) challenges contemporary art museum practices and calls for an open discussion regarding radical restructuring(s) from within.

In 2022, a new presentation of the open letter keynote was commissioned by the Tate Modern and premiered September 16th as part of Reshaping the Collectible an international convening and multi-year initiative supported by the Mellon Foundation.

DO YOU HAVE A VISION FOR AN ARTIST & ACTIVIST LED MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE?

Gómez-Peña and La Pocha Nostra have a longstanding practice of questioning museum practices and this letter and ongoing project is part of that critical tradition.

We are very open to your ideas and interpretations of the project and welcome your proposals.

This ongoing project invites the public to share their own open letters and is a call for our most daring institutions and presenters to join our growing list of accomplices. The possibilities for presenting the work are diverse - including live performance keynotes (in-person and virtual), pedagogical workshops and more.

Interested presenters please contact project lead Emma Tramposch: pocha@pochanostra.com

We are also still collecting individual letters and responses about your vision for a museum of the future. Watch Gómez-Peña’s 2021 open letter here and add your voice by submitting this online form, emailing tomuseumsofthefuture@gmail.com, or leaving a message at 773-823-9700.

THE MUSEUM OF THE FUTURE IS:

Our growing list of collaborators and accomplices:

La Pocha Nostra

Public Media Institute & Lumpen Radio

The Jane Addams Hull House Museum

The SMART Museum Chicago

The Portland Art Museum

The Tate Modern

The Saint Joseph’s Art Society

Pacific University, Oregon

University Illinois, Chicago

500 Capp Street 

Who will join us?