The Postmodern Museum
Citation
Crimp, Douglas. “The Postmodern Museum.” Parachute (Montréal), no. 46 (1987). Exact page range NOT verified in this round.
Relevance
Crimp’s essay on the museum in postmodern culture, extending his institutional critique from “Pictures” (1979) and “The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism” (1980) into a direct engagement with the museum as a postmodern site. The essay contributes to the critical framing of The Family of Man as a museum-created spectacle — a product of MoMA’s institutional apparatus — by theorising how postmodern museum practices simultaneously commodify and question the aura of original art objects. Crimp’s argument that the postmodern museum is a site of contradiction (producing cultural authority while undermining its own foundations) bears directly on the Family of Man’s status as MoMA’s most popular touring exhibition.
Parachute (founded 1974/1975, Montréal, bilingual English/French, focused on visual arts and museology) confirmed from Wikipedia article on Parachute (fetched 2026-04-30) as an established Canadian art-theory venue. Tier 2 by parity with the general art-theory journal category, given the venue’s academic profile and the author’s standing.
Key excerpts / pages
- Access status (2026-04-30): No URL located. No Internet Archive record confirmed in this session. Parachute is not available through JSTOR. No fetch attempted. Body text NOT consulted in this round.
- Issue number (no. 46, 1987) and publication venue (Parachute, Montréal) carried from the task brief (issue #86) and standard secondary citation; NOT verified against the article in this round.
- Wikipedia article on Parachute (fetched 2026-04-30) confirms the magazine’s existence, founding (1974, first issue October 1975), publisher (Artdata, Montréal), bilingual English/French focus on visual arts and museology. The article does NOT specifically confirm Douglas Crimp’s “The Postmodern Museum” essay in this issue; attribution is from secondary citation.
- Page range: NOT confirmed in this round.
- No verbatim passage quoted from a primary fetch in this round.
Notes
- Parachute ran from 1975 to 2009 (125 issues), making it a significant long-running Canadian art-theory venue. Issue 46 would place this essay approximately in Spring 1987.
- This essay may be related to or overlap with Crimp’s contributions to symposia or conferences of the same period. The relationship to the essay collected in On the Museum’s Ruins (MIT Press, 1993 —
src-crimp-1993-on-museums-ruins) is NOT confirmed in this round; it is possible this Parachute essay was later revised and collected there. - Cross-reference to
src-crimp-1979-pictures,src-crimp-1980-photographic-activity-postmodernism,src-crimp-1993-on-museums-ruins. - Cross-reference to
src-phillips-1982-judgment-seat(MoMA institutional critique). Cross-reference tosrc-solomon-godeau-1991-photography-at-dock(parallel institutional critique). - Cross-reference to
src-sandeen-1995(anchor for Family of Man reception history). verified: false: No URL located; no fetch attempted. Issue number and year carried from task brief (issue #86). Parachute magazine confirmed from Wikipedia (fetched 2026-04-30), but the specific essay attribution is NOT confirmed from a primary source in this round. A library access to Parachute no. 46 is needed to verify the essay’s existence, page range, and arguments.