Dissecting the system: Understanding The Museum in a changing world

Museums are faced with ever shifting societal norms, challenging what role it should play in discussing and shaping those norms. These challenges are expressed by protests, imploring and even demanding museums to make structural change. Much work has been done in Museum Studies to understand how museums are capable of weathering these demands, and even suggest that museums can lead the way in reform. This thesis is an attempt to better understand the reality of how museums respond to these shifts in order to construct a solid foundation that will allow for future research. To do so, four variables have been identified that are consistently present in incidents were the museum is put to the test: The Object, The Museum, The Activist, and The Public. In order to better understand these variables on a theoretical, an interdisciplinary literature review has been carried out. To see how theory translates into practice, five case studies have been chosen wherein the variables are isolated...Show moreMuseums are faced with ever shifting societal norms, challenging what role it should play in discussing and shaping those norms. These challenges are expressed by protests, imploring and even demanding museums to make structural change. Much work has been done in Museum Studies to understand how museums are capable of weathering these demands, and even suggest that museums can lead the way in reform. This thesis is an attempt to better understand the reality of how museums respond to these shifts in order to construct a solid foundation that will allow for future research. To do so, four variables have been identified that are consistently present in incidents were the museum is put to the test: The Object, The Museum, The Activist, and The Public. In order to better understand these variables on a theoretical, an interdisciplinary literature review has been carried out. To see how theory translates into practice, five case studies have been chosen wherein the variables are isolated and assessed: the first case study concerns the Afrika Museum in the Netherlands; the second case study concerns the British Museum in England; the third case study concerns the National Museum in Warsaw in Poland; the fourth case study concerns the Louvre in France; the fifth and final case study concerns the Hermitage Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Furthermore, an online survey was distributed focusing solely on The Public, as information from this variable’s point of view was not easily found in academic literature. These methods allowed not only for understanding the variables when isolated, but also how they interacted with one another. Findings indicate that the role of each variables can only be defined in broad strokes, and that they are not always consistent. It is suggested that more research be done especially in the role of The Object, as this variable was the most difficult to clearly define. Furthermore, there is a lack of engagement with The Public that needs to be addressed; more comprehensive methods need to be utilised to bridge the chasm between museums and the audience they are trying to reach.Show less

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Dissecting the system: Understanding The Museum in a changing world