Eleventh International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

Curator practices in small independent museums created by grassroots affiliates often differ greatly from those of traditional institutional museum models. These curators practice a closer, deeper, and active relationship with the local community. Curators and their museums become spaces and channels to the voice of the community they represent: both inside and outside the museum walls. The museum becomes a community space where the community’s history is presented as it happened and pristine from the sanitisations of institutional hegemonies. Curators of independent grassroots museums can present a community as it perceives itself and a historic imaginary as the local community itself experienced and interpreted it. They can choose either to transform their community and its perceived image or recede from any involvement outside the traditional role. The curators of the independent grassroots museums in this study demonstrate how curatorship goes further than the museum building and exhibits. This type of inclusive museum, its practices and curatorship take also a social and political role from which the community, its surroundings, and country likely benefit.