Thirteenth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

This paper considers the role and function of the museum as a relational and dialogical object, drawing on Tate Exchange as its case study. It will offer the museum as a civic space of plural and diverse knowledges, an agent for its publics to navigate their way through their lived experience. Framed through Bourriaud’s (1998) relational aesthetics and Kester’s (2004) dialogical aesthetic, the paper positions the museum as a relational (and dialogical) object, that functions as the relational art object: here the museum is cluster of artistic practices and learning pedagogies on a common trajectory that, via convivial modes of social exchange with the public are concerned with human interactions, social context and collective meaning making. Tate Exchange has created a platform within Tate for arts-led co-produced and participative knowledge creation with the public and transformed the institution’s relation to the public, to the civic, and to itself. Its socially engaged arts practice operates as a ‘social interstice’, a space that is located within an overarching system but that suggests other possibilities for exchanges within and without the museum, are concerned with provoking and sustaining individual and collective encounters. The paper closes with a set of key learnings of Tate Exchange practice that can be applied across the museum sector, as well as a roster of key provocations to changing museum’s critical capacity and civic potential.