THE LIMITS OF PARTICIPATION IN A MUSEUM?

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THE LIMITS OF PARTICIPATION IN A MUSEUM?

Journal Title: Muzealnictwo - Year 2016, Vol 57, Issue

Abstract

Over the last dozen years or so, museums all over the world have changed dynamically in terms of their attitude towards their audience. Their attention is centred more and more around the viewers, and their needs have become the management’s priority. The word “viewer” no longer means the guest of a museum. The visitor becomes a participant in the museum’s activity, and even its co-creator. In Great Britain, projects based on the idea of the audience co-creating the museum programme are being conducted, for example the Tate Gallery, which has been running the Young Tate programme (later the Tate Collective) for young audiences since the mid-1990s. In the USA, the idea of participation in museums has been popularised by Nina Simon whose participation helped the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz. In Poland, practices involving visitors have successfully been used, for example, by the Museum of Art in Łódź, and on an unprecedented scale – the National Museum in Warsaw in their “Anything Goes” project curated by children. However, we know that not everything goes in a museum, and that each participatory action – irrespective of the flexibility of the scenario – needs to be kept in line. The aim of this article is to identify the significance of museum participation as defined by people who run museums, and to reflect upon the limits to the freedom of participants in a museum programme. The methodology comprises a comparative analysis of a selection of participatory actions chosen by various museums, as well as a survey carried out among those who run museums.

Authors and Affiliations

Katarzyna Jagodzińska

Keywords

EP ID EP187033
DOI 10.5604/04641086.1210346
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