The Consciousness Industry

Art Institutions and museums continue to be challenged in regard to the blatant incongruity between their theoretical ideal as a 'neutral cultural experience' and a place of democratic exchange and the reality which is inherently ideological and fraught with a plethora of political, social and cultural elements.

According to Adorno, the Institution of art is intimately linked to the governing ideology of society. Thus it reflects the 'very mechanisms of social control and oppression that ideology performs."

The artistic practice of Institutional critique since the late 1960's has been engaged in revealing the fundamental and largely hidden machinations and ideology of the art industry. Artists, such as Marcel Broodthaers and Michael Asher, have been involved in projects which reveal the political and economic realities of the administration and organization within the art industry and the way that our consciousness has subsequently been shaped and controlled by the prevailing ideology.

By utilizing the existing structure of the ready-made Broodthaers created a fictional museum in 1968 in order to illustrate the fact that 'the museum was born, not via a concept, but by way of circumstance, the concept came later.' Broodthaers questioned the ideological frame of the museum, who determines their organization and the social, political and economic underpinnings of the institution.He also observed the capacity of the art industry to absorb and transform art into the commercial cycle regardless of the original intent.

Asher's work also calls into question the spaces and practices of the art institution and how we are conditioned by its methods of interpreting and presenting art. He uses various techniques which focus on the architectural, design or administrative strategies of the organization that presents art and shapes and controls its significance in the social and economic context.

In the project at MOMA, " The museum as a muse" Asher focused on the deaccessioned object. he dealt with the transfer of objects into and out of the museum's collection. Asher's approach created greater transparency in the custodial operations of the institution and how the museum constructs a canon, manipulates the market and constructs history.

The continued practice of institutional critique remains an important practice which is vital to the creation of a space of unrepressed artistic expression and a democratic space of public exchange and representation. As institutions and museums embrace the idea of a cultural institution as an increasingly viable commercial entity in a late capitalist democracy, it remains intrinsic that their frameworks are continually questioned and measured against the theoretical ideal in which they were conceived.