Imagined Conversations: The powerful (and power-shifting) potential of museum participation

Abstract

For over a century, museums have claimed that they will democratise, need to democratise or have a new idea or approach about how they are going to democratise. However, a range of issues and institutional cultures that privilege expertise conspire to ensure professional practice remains undemocratic, exclusive and one-sided. This tends to result in the retention of curatorial control and a professional culture that resists change. Participation—in which visitors are invited to leave a comment, co-create or contribute to exhibitions—is the latest trend adopted by the museum sector that promises to democratise museums. In the context of ongoing debate about the new museology and social inclusion, how can museum participation redress the power imbalance of traditional museum–visitor relations and democratise museums (to become relevant, responsible, diverse and multi-vocal platforms for the wider social good) when many previous attempts have failed? The Museum of Australian Democracy’s Power of 1 exhibition was used as a case study to examine participatory experiences in an Australian context. Conceived as an overt attempt to activate visitor agency, the exhibition was shaped—visually, emotionally and intellectually—by the answers shared by visitors with little or no filtering from a curator or other museum professional. Informed by questioning of the relevance of museums to diverse communities, together with findings that Australian citizens had become disillusioned towards politics, the experimental participatory exhibition trialled tangible and digital activities to encourage visitors to discover the changing nature of Australian democracy and the power of their voice within it. Using largely qualitative techniques supported by an integrated mixed-method approach and interdisciplinary research, this case study was based on three new bodies of data that consisted of semi-structured interviews with museum professionals, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with visitors at the time of their visit and semi-structured longitudinal interviews with visitors several months later. After more than a century of museums talking among themselves about how to democratise, this case study invited visitors to reflect on and share their views about democracy and consider the utility of participation to make museums more democratic. The study found original, unexpected and uncomfortable results. Contemporary museum practice remained inherently undemocratic as was evidenced by practices of censorship, reliance on personal and untested opinions and active resistance to change. However, that data also revealed that when visitors to the Power of 1 engaged in ‘imagined conversations’ with future and past visitors, decision-makers and power holders (dead or alive) and with communities to whom they may not otherwise have access, they exposed the powerful (and power-shifting) potential of museum participation. By accommodating multiple perspectives, being relevant to and inclusive of diverse audiences and respecting and activating visitor agency, participatory approaches showed the potential to transform museums into a platform to connect the voices, expertise and concerns of citizens to new communities, both real and imaginary, to make the museum more relevant, responsive and responsible. The Power of 1 case study demonstrated how participation became a democratic, imagined conversation between society, individuals and the museum.