Do we need a “new design museum” because design has changed?

Beatrice Leanza: “Design is simultaneously poetics and science that shapes the relationships between forms and objects of knowledge. Its role has not changed but the dimension in which it operates is more complicated, and the paradigm of its intervention has gone from global to planetary.

Being able to benefit from augmented tools, devices and processes – not only in a technological sense but in relation to a sensitivity related to what reality is and who and what populates it – design can broaden its dimensions of thought and carry forward post-humanist and post-global notions, positioning itself as a transscalar, transnational and transmaterial practice. And therefore also have a key role in rethinking the role, methodologies and ambitions of the cultural institutions that deal with it”.

How can design be "transmaterial"?

Beatrice Leanza: “I mean a design that is no longer a practice only oriented towards the production of objects or solutions but dedicated to the development of processes, methods and approaches that impact systems, from the molecular to the extra-planetary scale. In this sense, design goes to overcome the dualisms that have long defined its intervention, between material and digital, for example, or between human and non-human”.

What is the issue with museums today?

Beatrice Leanza: “Cultural institutions are experiencing a major crisis.

Public and private disinvestment or malinvestment – at a global level – is an indicator of the low importance given to cultural institutions as places where it's possibly, through equal participation, to imagine and co-create visions for the future. That is, museums as spaces and spheres of social collaboration that are increasingly being eroded in our communities and which we instead desperately need to articulate renewed collective and long-term ambitions to overcome the constant crises of our era.

The scarcity of means is compensated for by a general standardization of approaches, management criteria and offers that also tend to be increasingly politicized, thus destroying the true wealth of cultural institutions that lies precisely in their diversity”.

How would you define this homologation?

Beatrice Leanza: “Homologation means following a reference model dictated by programs centered on exhibitions, by narratives of audience engagement that depend on quantitative metrics of ticket sales and accumulation of followers, chasing an attention economy driven by the constant production of content.

The consequence is that research times and critical gaze are shortened, we focus on appealing topics for the public and large sponsors. Economic pressures have led the creative and cultural industry to be dominated by edutainment, which is in fact the nemesis of institutions because culture must open people’s eyes, ask questions, lead to transformation not emulation”.

How can cultural institutions move from homogenization to diversification?

Beatrice Leanza: “By asking relevant questions that lead to defining new approaches. To do this, it is necessary to open conversations and bring together voices, visions and experiences. We are in a moment of epochal transition and there is a need for new structures, connections, methods of action to ferry us towards the future. We need to create alternative relationships (also at the level of economic sustainability) between the stakeholders who participate in this transformation and museums are places where these forms of testing, ‘trial’ and prototyping can take place.

Design, which is simultaneously poetics and the science of relationships between constantly changing forms of knowledge, has an important role in this scenario”.

Why did you write this book?

Beatrice Leanza: “The New Design Museum – which is also built on a series of interviews and case studies – is not a directory of names and institutions, but a tool to open conversations and fuel a debate that already exists but must expand.

What I hope for is a change of pace, stimulated by the disruptive experiences of some institutions and independent realities compared to the models of the past on which the action programs of many institutions today are still built”.

What is your vision for the future of museums?

Beatrice Leanza: “The fundamental theme is how to preserve diversity and how to continue to generate it, moving away from the idea that there are single winning strategies for everyone. Each institution needs to make a clear and strategic choice regarding what its vision and mission is, regardless of its specialization or the nature of its heritage, whether tangible or intangible.

Institutions, which can potentially become activators and not just audience attractors, are in fact collective devices that operate in a contextual way, leveraging what Ezio Manzini calls hyperlocalism: places where it is possible to weave relationships, respond with punctuality and precision, generate sensitivity and empathy to community contexts and conditions. The challenge, which the book partly takes on, is to connect this contextuality to transnational networks with which to engage in order to fuel a broader and more connected transformative process”.