Advisor/tutor: Anselm Franke

Arnhem, March 2020

Abstract

This thesis attempts to analyse the role of the gaze and its relation to symbolic violence within an art museum in order to develop a discussion regarding how “improbable and impossible” a non-imperial, non-patriarchal, indeed a feminist museum might be. To achieve this, I draw upon the research of art and philosophy scholars such as Jean-Joseph Goux, Griselda Pollock, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Mieke Bal, Tony Bennett, and Rosalind Krauss, among others, to understand the contemporary art museum, and how its shift towards a structural change of power in museums might happen.