Museums and libraries are heterotopias

Museums and libraries have become heterotopias in which time never stops building up and topping its own summit, whereas in the seventeenth century, even at the end of the century, museums and libraries were the expression of an individual choice. By contrast, the idea of accumulating everything, of establishing a sort of general archive, the will to enclose in one place all times, all epochs, all forms, all tastes, the idea of constituting a place of all times that is itself outside of time and inaccessible to its ravages, the project of organizing in this way a sort of perpetual and indefinite accumulation of time in an immobile place, this whole idea belongs to our modernity. The museum and the library are heterotopias that are proper to western culture of the nineteenth century.

Michel Foucault, 'Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias' in Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité (at https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwimo4-YlaHkAhVQblAKHWf9DZoQFjAFegQIBRAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.mit.edu%2Fallanmc%2Fwww%2Ffoucault1.pdf&usg=AOvVaw333VKyhg9HhLuy9An6eJNQ ) p.7