A prominent critic and theorist considers the criteria of value for
collecting and storing works of art.
In modernity, the museum was the institution that made art accessible to
the broader public. An artwork was collected if it was considered
beautiful, passionate, engaged, or critical--and primarily if it was
deemed historically relevant. But today, with the total availability and
saturation of images, the museum has lost its privileged status as the
exclusive place for the display of art. In our age of digital media, how
does a particular artwork get selected for a museum collection? Which
symbolic criteria must this artwork satisfy for it to obtain value? And
in what ways does the institution of the museum remain relevant?
Logic of the Collection is framed by Boris Groys's original and
provocative proposition: an artwork is considered historically relevant
if it fits the logic of the museum collection. In these critical essays,
the distinguished philosopher and theorist of art and media analyzes the
relationship between the logic of the collection and various modern
ideologies. He reflects on the explosion of art production and
distribution through the ascendency of digital media as well as the ways
in which the accumulated artworks will be collected and preserved in the
future, as the potential limits of public and private collections are
reached.
