Abstract
In recent decades, the increased focus on museum audiences has led to an interest in how museums can attract new user groups or so-called non-visitors. This focus on the ability of museums to engage visitors from a broad demographic reality has brought new and important knowledge about the motivations and desires of those user groups. At the same time, however, there has been less focus on the engagement and motivations of visitors, who already visits museums or what Hooper-Greenhill in a 1995 study has labelled “those who will actually come”. Furthermore, only a limited part of the research literature and the politically initiated user studies have focused in isolation and in depth on the users of smaller art museums including their regional and local differences, realities and uses. This study provides a critical examination of how a smaller, local Danish art museum and its collections are communicated, distributed and used in local communities and with what effect to the museum’s users. The aim of the project is to provide research-based insights into the potentials for identity creation, feelings of belonging and community that can be found in the local art museum. The assumption is that the space of the museum creates an opportunity for experience sharing and a sense of cultural inheritance, and that it is in particular through examination of the museums’ already established dissemination practices and user groups that such can be delineated and identified.
Presenters
Maja RudloffExternal Lecturer/Researcher, Department of Arts, Roskilde University, Denmark
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Local, Art, Museums, Visitors, Community, Cultural, Inheritance, Identity
