Searching for a state-of-the-art public space: city museums among archives and networks

The article focuses on innovations in city museum in recent years. By focusing on the user – as opposed to the collection – the changes in city museums have an influence on the statute of the museum, considerably altering its mission. Going so far as to build up databases and digital displays, the museum increasingly intersects its functions with those of an archive which (with particular regard to architectural materials) now proposes exhibitive forms of fruition. The most extreme consequences of this phenomenon is the online museum, with numerous peculiar aspects: it is flexible (its collection can grow without problems, and be presented in different forms), democratic, interactive and inexpensive, and it allows flows of information in several directions. The comparison with the contemporary city remains the fundamental, hinging element, as several intuitions has already shown in the past.