‘Whose cake is it anyway?’: museums, civil society and the changing reality of public engagement. Dr Bernadette Lynch (original) (raw)
Related papers
'Engage the World': Examining Conflicts of Engagement in Museums, 2014
Public engagement has become a central theme in the mission statements of many cultural institutions, and in scholarly research into museums and heritage. Engagement has emerged as the go-to-it-word for generating, improving or repairing relations between museums and society at large. But engagement is frequently an unexamined term that might embed assumptions and ignore power relationships. This article describes and examines the implications of conflicting and misleading uses of 'engagement' in relation to institutional dealings with contested questions about culture and heritage. It considers the development of an exhibition on the Dead Sea Scrolls by the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto in 2009 within the new institutional goal to 'Engage the World'. The chapter analyses the motivations, processes and decisions deployed by management and staff to 'Engage the World', and the degree to which the museum was able to re-think its strategies of public engagement, especially in relation to subjects, issues and publics that were more controversial in nature.
Reflective debate, radical transparency and trust in the museum. Dr Bernadette Lynch
Lynch, B, 2013, Reflective Debate, Radical Transparency and Trust in Museums, Special Issue, Working through conflict in Museums: Museums, objects and participatory democracy, Museum Management and Curatorship 28 (1), 1–13
Social movement theory has, in recent years, been criticized for its inability to develop theoretical frameworks and forms of analysis relevant to activists and the causes they represent. In contrast, the same period has seen an escalation of claims made about the instrumentality of museums to source communities and stakeholder groups as well as governments. Ideas of shared authority, empowerment through recognition, community collaboration, and political agency have transformed the field of museum studies. In this chapter, I draw on theorizing from the field of museum studies and on several case studies that explore the relationship between collective action and the Smithsonian Institution to highlight and address the lacunae evident in social movement theory, and propose analytical alternatives. In so doing, I revisit Clifford's argument that museums can function as contact zones.
Playing by the Rules of the Game. Participation in the Post-Representative Museum
Taking up the idea of participation seems to be a trend in current institutional discourse and museum practice, which increasingly set out to achieve “social inclusion.” But who is to be included, and in what way? Which identitary ascriptions are part of the game? And why should anyone be interested in taking part in a game invented entirely by others? This text focuses on spaces of agency within the museum that seek to reject, transgress or even also to redefine the significances ascribed to the concept of participation.
Museums as Agents for Social Change
Museums as Agents for Social Change, 2021
Museums as Agents for Social Change is the frst comprehensive text to examine museum practice in a decolonised moment, moving beyond known roles of object collection and presentation. Drawing on studies of Mutare Museum, a regional museum in Eastern Zimbabwe, this book considers how museums with inherited colonial legacies are dealing with their new environments. The book provides an examination of Mutare Museum's activism in engaging with topical issues afecting its surrounding community, and Chipangura and Mataga demonstrate how new forms of engagement are being deployed to attract new audiences, whilst dealing with issues such as economic livelihoods, poverty, displacement, climate change and education. Illustrating how recent programmes have helped to reposition Mutare Museum as a decolonial agent of social change and an important community anchor institution, the book also demonstrates how other museums can move beyond the colonial preoccupation with the gathering of collections, conservation and presentation of cultural heritage to the public. Museums as Agents for Social Change will primarily be of interest to academics and students working in the felds of museum and heritage studies, history, archaeology and anthropology. It should also be appealing to museum professionals around the world who are interested in learning more about how to decolonise their museum.