Speed, Rhythm and Time-Space: Museums and Cities

This article assesses some potential approaches to museums and cities propelled by a theoretical preoccupation with modernity as a condition of speed. Here, one can extrapolate two variants in the writings and interventions of Marinetti, Simmel, Virilio, and writers in the postmodern tradition: (a) the museum is slow, it is a brake on modernity, it is modernity’s sedentary other and (b) the museum is fast, it is as quick as the city, reflecting modernity’s impulse toward acceleration. To finesse these approaches, the article will move toward the method of rhythmanalysis and an emphasis on time—space considerations. It is Lefebvre’s teasing last snippets on the concept of rhythm, the article will argue, presaged by Benjamin’s approach to the variant tempos of modernity in The Arcades Project, that point to a fuller and more advanced approach to urban—museological relations and the multiple rhythms that feature in both.