Museums Without (Scholar‐)Curators: Exhibition–Making in Times of Managerial Curatorship

Abstract

Museum practice has undergone significant changes in recent decades, particularly since the advent of New Museology. One of these transformations has profoundly altered the work of exhibition making and curatorship. In a number of institutions, particularly in Francophone Canada, France, and Northern Europe, the ethnographic or disciplinary approach ensured by scholar‐curators has been progressively abandoned as exhibition making and other curatorial tasks have been taken over by professional project managers and administrators. This departure from traditional curatorship, which grew out of a desire to narrow the gap between museums and society, has slowly made community engagement and citizen participation into a central institutional objective. This change in museum priorities has significantly impacted the nature of museum management. One such impact has been the emergence of a professional non‐curatorial managerial class, a phenomenon that has received relatively little attention as an academia‐divorced practice. This paper draws from endeavours at the Muséee de la civilisation (Quebec City, Canada) to address managerial practices in exhibition making. Tracing the history of this museum, which is both the heir and instigator of the managerial‐based structures that emerged out of 1980s social museology, it highlights the limits, but also the many possibilities, of managerial‐based exhibition making. The paper analyses two participatory exhibitions inaugurated in 2015, one exclusively dedicated to contemporary dance, and the other to the cultural history of First Nations and Inuit communities in Quebec, and asks how knowledge was exchanged and meaning created in the exhibition space by sharing the curatorship between the communities and exhibition project managers. Notwithstanding the importance of the social scope of managerial models in exhibition‐making, the paper also highlights the importance of renewing links between research and exhibition making, particularly those that are better adapted to non‐academic community‐driven institutions.

From connoisseur to the good manager. Perspectives in managerial curatorship from Canada and Brazil

“…A few years ago I worked on a series of publications which explored the theme ‘Museums Without Curators’ (Viau‐Courville, 2016a, 2016b, 2017). The title was intentionally provocative and aimed at sparking discussions on a kind of museum practice and museum thinking which I called managerial curatorship (Viau‐Courville, 2016b). Managerial curatorship developed mainly, though not exclusively, in so‐called society museums during the 1990s, particularly in French‐speaking Canada and later in parts of French‐speaking Europe.…”

“…A few years ago I worked on a series of publications which explored the theme 'Museums Without Curators' (Viau-Courville, 2016a, 2016b. The title was intentionally provocative and aimed at sparking discussions on a kind of museum practice and museum thinking which I called managerial curatorship (Viau-Courville, 2016b).…”

Who Is Leading the Project? A Comparative Study of Exhibition Production Practices at National Museums in Finland and the Baltic States

“…Contemporary attention is aimed at how museums can influence social wellbeing and react to communities' needs, and to achieve this intention, museums have had to 'reinvent' themselves (Anderson 2012). Reorganization involves exhibition production (Viau-Courville 2017) and the redistribution of curators' authority within museums (Edwards 2007;McCall and Gray 2014;Longair 2015;Wood 2019). Some empirical studies maintain that the new museology is far too theoretical and the practices of the 'traditional museum' do not easily disappear from the museal field (McCall and Gray 2014;Nieroba 2018).…”

Curators With and Without Collections : A Comparative Study of Changes in the Curator’s Work at National Museums in Finland and in the Baltic States

“…In recent years, museologists have been interested in putting the ideas of the new museology into practice. The research has revealed, among other things, that, as the new museology stood in contrast with the classical collection-centred museum, the study of collections remained in the background, so the job description of classical curators changed and their position weakened (see McCall and Gray 2014;Viau-Courville 2017). In recent years, the curator's competence and functions as well as usage of collections have again deserved more attention both in theory and practical museum work (see Greene 2015: 3-4).…”

“…The new ideology contrasted the traditional museum as an institution focusing too much on artefacts and curators studying them, with the new, social museum, which assumes greater social responsibility and actively socialises with the community. From the point of view of the new museology, the traditional museum has been rebuked for authoritarianism and elitism, a colonialist viewpoint, and representation of the interests of a narrow social group, above all, the elite and intellectuals (see Ross 2004;McCall and Gray 2014;Viau-Courville 2017). One of the expressions of the new museology is the so-called inclusive museum, where visitors can discuss the exhibition, share their stories, and feel involved due to the possibility to cooperate in a purpose-built environment (Simon 2010: 350).…”