Abstract
Imagine you enter a museum exhibition and instead of merely observing the objects from behind the glass and reading about them on the signs, you are also invited to pick them up, touch them, sense them, and play with them. How does that change your museum experience? This paper explores how the National Museums of World Culture in Sweden are rethinking the democratic potential of our handling/educational collection. A collection with a different set of regulations which enables not only a potential of using multiple senses, but also enables us to ask new questions about established museum practices that produce and reproduce divisions and hierarchies not simply between objects, but also between people and cultures. The democratic potential of the handling collection can help us questions these frames and categories, thus, is also part of the larger purpose of transforming Ethnographic/World Cultures museums into more inclusive spaces by engaging audiences differently. At the center of this research is a case study from the ongoing exhibition “Democracy does not exist – we make it!”. It focuses on how school visits are transformed when the students are encouraged to touch and explore the objects in unexpected ways.
Presenters
Helen ArfvidssonCurator, Content and Learning, National Museums of World Culture, Sweden
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
HANDLING COLLECTION, EDUCATIONAL COLLECTION, USING MULTIPLE SENSES, AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT, INCLUSIVE
