CONSENSUS AND DISSENSUS AT THE NEOLIBERAL ART MUSEUM
CONSENSUS AND DISSENSUS AT THE NEOLIBERAL ART MUSEUM

Summary/Abstract: Rancière’s dissensual politics is used to consider art museums’ efforts toward social work through institutional outreach and participatory strategies within art and education. While such foci hold the populist aura of inclusion through increased public and civic engagement, I lay out how these practices do not compromise democratic politics or civic subjectification, but, rather, further neoliberal distributions of the sensible as a manifestation of the hatred of democracy. One mode of critique and dissensual resistance of this distribution is apparent in the Occupy Museum (OM) movement, which highlights the abuse of labor in the name of the public good within museums. OM uses the art of protest to confuse the political distribution of art museums by exposing their neoliberal managerialism. This spurs a call to action for those who might be incited to radical politics through holding the police to their word and staging a dispute in the name of equality within public spaces such as art museums.

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