In her master’s thesis, Wiebke Wiesner probes the roles of contemporary art in postcolonial museum revision processes. Using the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome as a case study, she focuses on the intersection of museal ruin and institution building, the ambivalent status of reflexive distance towards the institution’s past, and the reconstruction of the museum’s sense of self as an educational project. It is within these fault lines that the museum assigns a pivotal role to artistic interventions.
Tracing the frictions that arise between the opening of meaning (Bedeutungsöffnung) through art, the questioning of hegemonic narratives, and the promise of usefulness (Nützlichkeitsversprechen) as a catalyst for change, Wiesner examines the frameworks within which artistic practices are situated and legitimized, as well as the assumptions under which these practices acquire symbolic and methodological significance in the museum’s institutional transformation. By reflecting on the concept of ritual coherence, the mobilization of self-critique, and the negotiation of the autonomy of art, Wiesner investigates the inherent tensions at work in museum revisions that seek to overcome colonial continuities through the deployment of aesthetic difference.