Street Art and Museum: “museumphobia” or “museumphilia”?

Abstract

At the beginning of the (short) story of Street Art there was no worse enemy than a museum for an art which was born transgressive and at the edge of criminality. Over the years we have seen the gap narrowing and the relationship between Street Art and museums becoming more and more ambiguous and heated in both directions. From the "museumphobia" of the beginning - in part still practiced by some artists like the Italian Blu, who decided to "sacrifice" some of his historical murals in Berlin and Bologna by removing them from the "business of urban art" – we have now moved into a widespread "museumphilia". Attempts at reciprocal seduction abound: on the one hand many street artworks have been exhibited in galleries and museums and some street artists, like Banksy, have sold their products at exorbitant prices. On the other hand, many museums have organized thought-provoking exhibitions of Street Art, both spectacular and much debated, given that often the exhibited pieces had been removed from their public spaces without the artist’s authorization. The aim of the present paper is a) to investigate how essential the vandalic element is to guaranteeing Street Art’s own language and to explore if the musealization of Street artwork is conceivable, b) to consider the fruitful implications this conflict could provoke in a rethinking of the role of museums and to identify the aesthetic and political consequences for urban spaces of a widespread aesthetization generated by Street Art.