What if the true opportunity of A.I. isn’t how museums adopt tech—but how they redefine their purpose in a world where time is restructured?
Courtesy the High Museum of Art.
Although organized under a different part of the United States tax code, art museums are still businesses. Hence, like many of our for-profit and nonprofit peers, our institutions’ directors, staff, and trustees are entertaining the promise and potential of artificial intelligence (A.I.) like everyone else.
Some of us are embracing the analytic capabilities that A.I. provides. A brave few have boldly jumped in programmatically. I’m a consumer on the analytics side—that is, I use artificial intelligence to interpret data, for textual analysis, and to synthesize information. And while I’m open-minded regarding how A.I. could be implemented into museum programming, I’m holding firm (at least for now) to the conviction that this evolution will be driven primarily by artists—not by those of us in institutions.
Let Artists Lead the Way
Why is that? First, I’m not sure any of us have the resources—human, financial, or intellectual—to keep pace with the technological arms race and cyclical obsolescence inherent in keeping a public-facing, didactic, and inspiring A.I. component relevant within our galleries. Not anytime soon, at least.
Randall Suffolk. © Ted Pio Roda Photography, 2024. Courtesy the High Museum of Art.
Second, I believe the 20th-century American art historian Bernard Berenson got it right when stating that “the work of art is the event.” I’m leery of chasing anything within our galleries that will distract from the immediacy of engaging directly with the works on view. Consequently, I trust artists to take the lead in defining what’s next and what’s relevant when it comes to the adaptive use of artificial intelligence within their practice—and, by extension, ultimately within our galleries. At that point, it’s our responsibility to determine the appropriate framework for presenting that work to our community.
Artificial Intelligence’s Quiet Power: Rethinking the Institution
For now, I’m far more interested and engaged in the potential organizational efficiencies and decision-making capacities that A.I. might drive behind the scenes and under the hood of our respective organizations. As museums and audiences become more agile and efficient thanks to these tools, we are afforded something rare: the capacity to rethink how we use our time, space, and social capital. That transformation opens the door to a more profound question for us within museums: What kind of public institutions do we want to be when the societal landscape shifts?
There’s another space—somewhere A.I.-adjacent—that I believe art museums should deeply lean into, take a leading role in activating, and intentionally mine for inspiration. What if the real challenge of A.I. isn’t how museums adopt technology but how they redefine their purpose in a world where time itself is restructured?
Courtesy the High Museum of Art.
Let’s consider it. What if even a fraction of the Artificial Intelligence Prophecy—the prediction that A.I. will advance to the point of becoming so widely accessible that humans are no longer needed for most tasks—actually delivers on the promise of shifting the work/life balance? What if we all get, say, 40 percent of our time back to pursue other, non-work activities? How should we then, as individuals, institutions, and society, approach the restructuring of that A.I.-adjacent space of opportunity?
Granted, just about every new technological advance has promised a commensurate trade between efficiency and free time. However, humans have been adroitly capable of finding more work to fill the gap… So I’m not exactly holding my breath. But for argument’s sake, let’s assume this time, it will. When and if that happens, art museums must already be positioned as inevitable, quality-time-every-time destinations for the redistributed “up-time” afforded humanity.
From Presenters to Cultural Generators
To achieve that, we cannot simply be an inspired option on a menu of distractions. So, starting right now, I suggest we strategically recalibrate our missions in three principal ways.
Courtesy the High Museum of Art.
First is to make Joseph Beuys’ mantra of “Kunst = Kapital” operational. Literally translated as “Art = Capital,” Beuys really meant that creativity is capital. Being future-focused now means that art museums must own, amplify, and adapt a version of creativity that expects to actively change our communities. We must hold ourselves accountable for making meaningful, measurable, and necessary contributions that dovetail our distinctive strengths with community needs and interests. Being exceptional is no longer enough. We must accept the challenge of being essential as well.
That’s an important shift in focus, but one worth fighting for. Art museums are already uniquely positioned to bring art, people, and ideas together. Moreover, we know that engagement with complex visual culture has the capacity to stimulate cognitive growth, spur innovation, engender empathy, ignite invention, and enhance our ability to communicate in meaningful ways.
All of which are traits of successful communities (let alone nations) in the 21st century. And so, the second ambition is to become essential based on community-building rather than audience-building. That is, shifting from simply attracting visitors to fostering long-term relationships rooted in shared values and mutual investment. For example, audience-building might look like promoting a blockbuster exhibition to drive attendance, while community-building could mean creating programs that encourage knowledge sharing, in-depth conversation, and repeat attendance. This may sound like semantics, but I’m convinced the difference is mission-driven, executable, and scalable.
Courtesy the High Museum of Art. CatMax Photography
Being a locus of community-building means being a place to participate, not simply attend. We need end-users, not visitors. The social compact here is that in return we must define and design our museums as “Giving Spaces.” This is connectivity with a personal sense of agency, an invitation to contribute, and an intentional activation of art’s power to highlight the interdependency of one’s place in the world.
If we accept the challenge of becoming essential and progress as vital “Giving Spaces,” then we’ve positioned ourselves to embrace and affect the third element of change: becoming generators of culture, not simply presenters of it.
I’m not suggesting any of this will be easy. But I believe it’s the important work that will keep us relevant and allow us to activate a prospective A.I.-adjacent space. And if the Prophecy fails to deliver? We’ll be vastly stronger, more compelling, and relevant in new and different ways regardless. That’s a win, no matter what.
Randall Suffolk is director of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.
Source: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/artificial-intelligence-museums-2643892
