CUP: Store

Urban Investigations

Museumopolis

What is a museum today? A giant fun house? A really artsy mall? Museums are wildly diverse in their sizes, annual operating budgets, missions, and their urban context.

In the summer of 2013, a group of 15 public high school students from across the Hudson Valley participated in an Urban Investigation project in collaboration with CUP, the Dia Art Foundation, and teaching artist Katarzyna Balug. The group asked: “What is the role of a museum in a city?”

The group prototyped museums for the future: museums that lack walls, that are utopian, dystopian, carved from precious stones, or run by residents. These models form the bedrock of this illustrated booklet.