Corpomuseum as an Ideal Type

The beginning of the 21st century was a time of great museum revolution. Many museums have been created that focus their activities not so much on collecting artefacts as on presenting impressive exhibitions, largely made of media relays. New museums are increasingly moving away from the concern for durable goods that characterizes traditional museums and transfer knowledge to their recipients through modern products and attractive technologies. In connection with the implementation of new and costly solutions regarding architecture, equipment, organizational structure and functioning, they actually need a lot of capital in the form of public finances and “human resources” from the very beginning of their activity. It seems that at present the need to raise this type of capital in a case of creating new institutions is far ahead of the need to collect works of culture that have constituted the essence and sense of museums created in previous centuries. The quality of planned projects also ceases to be related to the significance and reputation of the material culture heritage, and begins to be measured by the scale of the new museum buildings and the number of visitors. Products instead of cultural goods, or even products understood as cultural goods; visitors as engaged customers; capital understood by finance and “human resources”; large size ‒ which covers many issues ‒ ranging from structure, and architecture; modern technologies; political influence; brand strength and promotion ‒ all these aspects resemble the corporate model of organization. They provoke reflection on the functioning of the museum as a corporation, which is the purpose of the ideally typical structure of the “corpomuseum”.

The beginning of the 21st century was a time of great museum revolution. Many museums have been created that focus their activities not so much on collecting artefacts as on presenting impressive exhibitions, largely made of media relays. New museums are increasingly moving away from the concern for durable goods that characterizes traditional museums and transfer knowledge to their recipients through modern products and attractive technologies. In connection with the implementation of new and costly solutions regarding architecture, equipment, organizational structure and functioning, they actually need a lot of capital in the form of public finances and “human resources” from the very beginning of their activity. It seems that at present the need to raise this type of capital in a case of creating new institutions is far ahead of the need to collect works of culture that have constituted the essence and sense of museums created in previous centuries. The quality of planned projects also ceases to be related to the significance and reputation of the material culture heritage, and begins to be measured by the scale of the new museum buildings and the number of visitors. Products instead of cultural goods, or even products understood as cultural goods; visitors as engaged customers; capital understood by finance and “human resources”; large size ‒ which covers many issues ‒ ranging from structure, and architecture; modern technologies; political influence; brand strength and promotion ‒ all these aspects resemble the corporate model of organization. They provoke reflection on the functioning of the museum as a corporation, which is the purpose of the ideally typical structure of the “corpomuseum”.