Institutionalising Fragility

The sustainability of cultural organisations and their positioning in contemporary society are increasingly relevant topics among practitioners and scholars interested in the cultural field. Foundations, research centers, but also libraries and museums are under pressure to seek a balance between tradition and new challenges of modernity. Therefore, they need to rethink their role by developing new and more effective tools to reaffirm their fundamental function.

This e-book presents the results of a research project carried by Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli with ASK research Centre – Bocconi University on the relationship between identity transformation and sustainability. Four cases have been analysed (the challenges of the cultural policy in Tunisa; SALT of Istanbul, Turkey; the Science Museum in Trento, Italy; and the New York Public Library lab in the US) to highlight how cultural organisations play their role of cultural mediators in times of external and internal changes and how they incorporate the transformative nature of culture into their business model.