In a not-so-distant past, I offered a genealogy tracing the evolution of the Occidental museum as a passage from the 20th-century modernist model to a 21st-century neoliberal institution. The aim of this paper is to consider the Occidental museum and its neo-Orientalized “Other” in the present moment, in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, as museums are cautiously reopening under a new set of regulations, and the post- COVID-19 reality remains elusive. More precisely, my aim has been to consider the current status of the Occidental museum. The first part of this text presents a genealogy of museums in the post-WWII world, before COVID-19. The second part discusses the symbolic, imaginary, and real implications of the suddenly “dead” museum. What does this mean for the museum’s surviving hegemonic practices in the post-COVID-19 future? The main thesis posited in this paper is that the “Other” multiplies within the museum to the extent that the Occidental museum becomes “the other” to itself; however, I maintain that even this transformation does not absolve the Occidental museum of its responsibility to critically reflect on proper hegemonic practices and the processes of racialization.
