This article focuses on the power struggle in the art museum between conservation and education, where one wants to dedicate all of its available time and space to works of art while the other wishes to stimulate learning through mediations. This is an age-old debate which evolves under the economic pressure, consisting of always wanting to attract more and more visitors to the museum. It is also an ideological debate with the rise of mediations which now impose the model of cultural transmission in postindustrialized societies. As such, art museums are experiencing a storming debate on the place of mediations around the works of art, between the proponents of aesthetics and those of education. As history shows, the use of works of art is radically transformed, on both sides of the protagonists. Between these two positions, Bourdieu and Darbel made waves in the field of museum art education marked by the principle of distinction, and the “aesthetic shock” of Malraux, showing that the aesthetic experience arises from the understanding of the works of art and the knowledge of cultural codes. However, this is only an episode in a centuries-old saga. On one side is hidden, behind the lack of reading keys, the participation in a perverse dynamic, one of social exclusion of the neophyte public who cannot come to enjoy the works. On the other side, the rise of the museum art education hides the frustration of the educated public who sees the aesthetic experience hampered by a necessarily reductive interpretation of the meaning of the work of art. Today, at the centre of this debate, tensions still exist between the conservatives and the educators, torn between the development of new publics’ requirements and those of its regulars, collectors, artists, and the art market. These bodies guarantee a status to art museums in the networks of art, around contemporary art in particular. They revolve around this question: how far can a museum go for the deployment of mediation devices that facilitate the interpretation of works of art for the neophyte public without impeding the aesthetic experience of the accustomed or expert viewer?