Use and value diversity

This chapter examines the ongoing transformations within contemporary art institutions and their evolving infrastructures. Twenty-first-century art institutions both shape and are shaped by cross-cutting global challenges that push the planet towards ecological and social collapse. This dual position renders their existence inherently contradictory: while these challenges are intersectional, their limited integration into systematic, sustainable visions for institutional practice often produces fragmented responses. I propose that future art institutions may take the form of living organisms without walls – both physical and conceptual – interconnected with their internal components, the broader artistic ecosystem, and society at large. Although such networked institutions do not yet exist, current transformations and the challenges driving them allow us to conceptualise their potential emergence. Translocal networks of contemporary art institutions demonstrate particularly promising ways of addressing social challenges: they reveal the richness of global cultural ecosystems, influence approaches to various conflicts, facilitate the sharing of resources and knowledge, and leverage the diversity of human and natural environments.