It might prioritize changing displays over traditional conservation and accession practices, multi-vocal content over authoritative catalogs. It might feature content based on democratic rather than top-down processes. It may function with models found today in a co-working space or a sewing lounge.

A place where people are invited on an ongoing basis to contribute, to collaborate, to co-create, and to co-opt the experiences and content in a designed, intentional environment … It may look more like a coffee shop or a community arts center. where people discuss the objects on display with friends and strangers, sharing diverse stories and interpretations. In her well-known book The Participatory Museum she acknowledges the influence on her thinking of the enhanced visitor experiences that science centers and children’s museums started experimenting with in the 1960s and ‘70s. One of the most outspoken advocates of this development is Nina Simon, the soon-to-be ex-director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. Over the past couple of decades, community arts principles have also been gradually entering the museum world. Egalitarian, reciprocal, participatory creative processes in which shared ownership in the resulting artwork by people who have had no formal previous art training, are a hallmark of this practice which is rapidly expanding all over the globe. An important catalyst for this critical perception has been the international community arts movement, a very diverse phenomenon that is united by the idea that everyone, regardless of their background, has the right – and the ability – to actively express herself through art. It is clear that since the 1980s these institutions offer a conservative perspective on the origin and value of art and artifacts and have therefore come under increasing scrutiny. There is no need here to recapitulate the troubled histories of western public and private museums Tony Bennett and other new museology scholars already started paving that way back in the mid ‘90s and many have followed in their footsteps.

Anyone intent on decolonizing museums could benefit from critically exploring the complexities involved in participation. In conversation with MOED, News IN CONVERSATION WITH EUGENE VAN ERVENĮqualizing, liberating or decolonizing museums, to me, should be about participation, a notion that is not self-evident or always an inherently good thing.

The Participatory Museum by Nina Simon