Perhaps for the first time in the history of avant-garde, the museum in its broadest sense has changed its role from whipping boy to favorite son in the family of cultural institutions. This transformation is of course most visible in the happy symbiosis between postmodern architecture and new museum buildings. The success of the museum may well be one of the salient symptoms of Western culture in the 1980s: ever more museums were planned and built as the practical corollary to the 'end of everything' discourse.

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