Participation and the post-museum

The book discusses the concept of participation in museum practice and ideas that constitute the paradigm of the post-museum. The author investigates to what extent museums are democratising in terms of involving people in the decision-making processes and to what extent it is an illusion obscuring the reinforcement of the authoritarian position which is historically inherent to museums. The process of creating a new museum definition in the 2010s and early 2020s at the global forum of the International Council of Museums demonstrated a clash of visions for museums. The proposal for the new definition presented in 2019 saw museums as “democratising, inclusive and polyphonic spaces for critical dialogue about the pasts and the futures.” Even though in the end a more ‘conservative’ definition was adopted in 2022, it is important to interrogate what is the scope of the process of democratisation and sharing power with the public and various stakeholders in museums. The post-museum is a new step in the evolution of the museum, after the modernist museum that was born in the 19th century and New Museology discourse initiated in the 1960s/1970s. The term was conceptualized by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill in 2000 to reflect new roles and responsibilities of museums in the ever-changing world. The post-museum seeks to share power with communities, encourages active participation in museum discourse, redresses social inequalities (Marstine 2006). Fashionable concept of the participatory museum, introduced already in the beginning of the 20th century by John Cotton Dana and century later popularised by Nina Simon, is part of this paradigm. Referring to different areas of museum practice (such as overall strategy, collecting, curatorial practice, education, community engagement), the author analyses not only ‘how’ and ‘why’, but mostly ‘if at all’ museums are capable and willing to share their power with the public and how it affects their identity. Drawing on literature from the field of political and social sciences, as well as cultural and museum studies on participation and applicability of the term in museums, it is apparent that using participatory tools does not necessarily lead to participatory museums. Participation may be viewed as manipulation, concealing beliefs about inequality in the museum–public relationship and mechanism of deepening these inequalities. Regardless of intentions and scale, the process of articulating the democratisation of museum spaces is progressing. Through employing the concepts of participation, power relations that are shaped between the museum and the public, the museum as a ‘contact zone’ and the post-museum paradigm, as well as the categories of an ethical, helpful, solidarity and relational museum, the author examines whether we can really talk about a participatory turn in museums. Do good intentions, openness and willingness to co-create/understand/discover change the identity of museums? Based on empirical research conducted in Polish museums (thirty institutions across the country representing all types, organisational and funding models) and own museum practice, the author investigates aspects of participatory conversation exercised in museums, after the ‘education turn’ and concurrent with the global discussion on the changing responsibilities of museums leading to formulation of new museum definition. The framework of the post-museum permits seeing the museum both as the actor that negotiates power and control with communities, partners and stakeholders (in-house), as well as the actor immersed in the public sphere where it negotiates its arguments externally in a broader landscape.