The catalogue – a book offering additional information about a collection of works – might not be the first thing conjured up by the words ‘Museum of the Future’. To many people, the term ‘book’ is something they associate more with the past. So will the exhibition catalogue still be a relevant medium in an ultra-modern museum of the future? I definitely think it will. People won’t lose their love of tangible memories. After visiting a great exhibition, they’ll want to take a piece of it away with them. It’s important, obviously, to take their wishes into account: what is it precisely that makes them opt for the exhibition catalogue?

Background information might be one reason, but there’s an opportunity here to do things differently. Rather than being a comprehensive reference book, the exhibition catalogue of the future could focus on carefully selected, easy to digest texts. It could highlight a few crucial facts, columns, interviews or other forms of information instead of a detailed history. Just as the exhibition takes place in ‘the now’, the publication exists in the present too. More than that, it physically leaves the institution; it’s not a repeat of the exhibition but a supplement to what you could see there. An additional space is created outside the museum in which present and history can meet, perform a duet and enhance each other’s message.

The exhibition and its catalogue will form a single whole. Nowadays, exhibition catalogues are more and more like coffee table books: deluxe editions like that often function independently of the exhibition, allowing them to be sold separately. The catalogue doesn’t need to be a more accessibly priced art book. By breaking away from that standard approach, it could actually achieve a unique position. It’s an ideal opportunity to experiment, with the publication potentially taking different forms: a magazine, say, a paperback or a pop-up book – forms that are better aligned with the message.

Viewers want to be visually stimulated by the exhibition catalogue too, but there’s more to that than a radically different, hip and eye-catching cover design. Above all, it is content and the approach that have to arouse people’s interest, which means the graphic artist will need to translate the spirit of the museum to a greater degree. The designer will shape the catalogue as an extension of the exhibition, giving viewers the feeling that they can take a piece of it home with them, rather than just a summary.

I look forward to the new, fresh exhibition catalogue, full of great interviews, columns and engaging stories. Provided we keep the content alive, the book is definitely not dead yet!

This article previously appeared in the summer issue of our museum magazine ZAAL Z.