Liz Grandmaison

Not a shrine but a crucible: building the creative
power of contestation into the museum

Abstract: How we see our history affects how we live in the now. As we experience global turmoil in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic distress and a crisis of representative democracy, we urgently need our museum sector to embark upon a new relationship with the public, one that welcomes knowledges and voices from outside the museum to help current and new audience members see history and the present from a multitude of perspectives. The conversation about how to activate and empower a larger, polyvocal audience takes place against the backdrop of a greatly contracted public sphere. Although audience development, marginalised voices and democratic crisis seem to present themselves as three disparate problems facing contemporary museums, I argue that the three are so intertwined that addressing them separately is counterproductive. To demonstrate how they might be addressed productively in tandem, I draw on insights from museum scholars and practitioners to argue that principles arising from critical pedagogies and radical democratic museum practice can be employed together to challenge dominant and marginalising narratives present in museums and their practices. When supplemented with elements from queer, feminist, anti-racist and post-colonial theories as required to suit institutional and community context, I argue that this framework has the potential to develop into a transformational force in museums’ efforts to enact positive social change.

(Honours thesis, Flinders University 2020)