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Accepted Paper:

Occupation: museum  
Brian Durrans (British Museum)

Paper short abstract:

Offering a perspective on current curatorial practice, the concept of 'occupation' (career, presence, engagement) also alludes to possible responses to forthcoming disruption of life as normal. Can this idea help museums negotiate uncertain times ahead?

Paper long abstract:

Most influential interpretations of museums and galleries, whether as instruments of authority or as spaces for critical discussion, were framed in times of economic growth and political optimism. Those whose insights they help popularise might consider whether museums' public-facing practices need revising if they are to serve as effectively in an uncertain future as they have done in the past. Can existing interest in, or affection for, museums be expanded into fully-engaged participation and an active sense of ownership? Standard curatorship, in which a collection or object-brokered theme is researched for the visitor's gaze, accommodates many variations from audio-guides to hands-on experience, yet public engagement is rarely sought or expected in the research phase. The visitor may say 'that's interesting' but rarely 'I helped with that'. The occupation of curator, and the occupation, interest or expertise of the visitor (or member of the public), are not only largely different but wholly separate. It would be no threat to curatorial independence - and may reinvigorate its prospects - if such occupations could occupy the same museum (and extra-museum) space and collaborate on a 'three-dimensional Wikipedia'. There are some partial precedents, but the main prompt for a distinctively new kind of curatorial practice, both to safeguard museums and more widely to inspire the tackling of social problems by imaginative collaboration, may be the sense of a world slipping out of control but not yet irretrievable.

Panel P02
Exhibiting anthropology
  Session 1