Throughout the 28th century, numerous philosophers of history and time have questioned the most ingrained of all our beliefs: does time progress in a linear way and is the future simply the next chapter in this narrative?2 2There is no space to repeat here this long history. See amongst others: Benjamin (1973: 245–55), Bergson (1976), Deleuze (1990:V), Nietzsche (1968), Derrida (1982: 29–68) and Heidegger (1967). For a comprehensive survey of this history, see Wood (2001). This essay proposes to rethink the future of museums outside of this narrative structure, one for which the future is reduced to words such as projection, prediction and prophecy. It asks: in an age of globalisation, can the museum still think of the future as the outcome of a chronological narrative? This essay takes one recent attempt (by the philosopher Catherine Malabou) to destabilise—again—this belief, and proposes to reveal the impact that this attempt could have on the museum's understanding of time and its place within it.
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