How to Build an Art Brand – The Museum Edition is a ‘live tutorial’ by artist Mette Riise, commissioned by Museum Why. Surrounded by promotional banners and assisted by PowerPoint slides, Riise provides a market analysis of the future market of Danish art museums — a future that doesn’t look particularly bright.
As museums are turning increasingly consumer-centric, they risk paradoxically losing their grip on the very audiences they seek to attract. In attempting to cater to both the masses and a multitude of stakeholder interests through value-neutral vision statements, they are effectively hollowing out their brands and losing market position to other experience-based brands like Tivoli.
Meanwhile, their continued practice of offering poor working conditions for artists leaves them vulnerable to a new kind of supplier power — that ofthe Neoliberal Marxist: A new artist archetype capable of building loyalty across alternative platforms, while articulating political ideals of just futures that speak to the real hopes and desires of contemporary audiences. These artists no longer depend on institutional validation and can engage audiences on terms museums have largely abandoned.

The work was shown at the seminar Eat the Rich at Malmö Art Museum in 2022.