Short Abstract:

Museums as knowledge institutions are historically contoured by written and unwritten rules. We understand unwriting the museum as an evolving set of practices of staying with the topics that trouble us and dismantling the norms, values and hegemonies the museum institution leans on.

Long Abstract:

The role of museums as knowledge institutions has always been contoured by different kinds of written and unwritten rules. While we may sometimes be ignorant or unaware of their normative effects, these rules do not exist by accident. They were created to solidify the power of the museum’s establishers and hegemonise a specific set of narratives and values. They define what kind of knowledge is considered worthy of being preserved and passed on and, as a result, silence a range of different voices and experiences. These rules and norms embody many problematic power relations: racialised discourses promoted by colonial sentiments, strict divisions between experts and lay people, juxtapositions between art and craft, culture and nature, and human and non-human. There is a need to rupture these established cognitive structures in the museum.

Our panel seeks to bring different attempts to unwrite these rules into dialogue. We understand unwriting the museum as practices of staying with the trouble, moving towards the uncomfortable, and dismantling the norms, values and hegemonies the museum institution leans on. We are interested in topics related to knowledge production, alternative epistemologies and cognitive ruptures in museums, the role of affects and emotions as avenues for unwriting the museum, and critical attempts to un- and rewrite exhibition design and modes of representation. Through theoretical approaches and empirical case studies, the panel seeks to show that even though the museum institution is a site of embodied privileges and norms, it also carries transformative power to impact the future.

This Panel has so far received 7 paper proposal(s).
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