Paper Short Abstract:

This paper analyses the perspectives of museum professionals in the UK and Germany, reflecting on their work and on ‘museum activism’, which is challenged by the impact of contemporary democratic crises, drawing out the complications of the dynamic relationship between ideals and practices while unwriting/rewriting museums.

Paper Abstract:

I argue that the museum is a public space in Benhabib’s dual sense (1992) of being symbolically representative as an institution of the demos, and in acting as a place where contrasting and varied ideas may be negotiated and explored (Eckersley 2022). As such, the museum is inevitably a part of the political and social realm. Conflicts over the political and social roles of museums internationally (Sandell 1998, Weil 1997) and in Germany (Korff & Roth 1990; Thiemeyer 2019) both prefigure and respond to the rewriting of the ICOM definition of museums (Fraser 2018, ICOM 2018, 2019, ICOM Germany 2020). ICOM consultations with museum professionals highlight polarisation within professional perspectives and that the idea of a 'museum' is homogenous neither internationally nor within Europe. More recently, conflicts over museums’ roles and the responsibilities of museum actors during democratic crises have come to the fore – in Germany the rise of the AfD, impacts of October 7th, and in the UK, Brexit, public disorder in summer 2024, etc – alongside European crises including the conflict in Ukraine.

Presenting initial findings from the AHRC-DFG funded project ‘Cultural Dynamics: Museums and Democracy in Motion’, this paper will focus on the perspectives of museum professionals in the UK and Germany, reflecting on their work and on ‘museum activism’ (Janes & Sandell 2019) – often addressing past democratic crises – which is challenged by the impact of contemporary democratic crises, drawing out complications of the dynamic relationship between ideals and practices while unwriting/rewriting museums.