Pille Runnel / Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (eds.) Democratising the Museum Reflections on Participatory Technologies Pille Runnel / Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (eds.) Democratising the Museum Democratising the museum is a collection of articles reflecting upon the problem of how participation, technologically mediated or not, can support the museum in the process of becoming more accessible. The open museum shares power with its visitors while negotiating professionalism and the role of the museum in a modern society. The book looks at the roles and struggles of audiences/visitors and professionals and the role of digital technologies in supporting the participatory museum. While different chapters draw on a variety of empirical examples, the main analytical backbone of the book comes from an extended participatory action research study conducted at the Estonian National Museum. This book aims at both academics and professionals working in the museum field. The Editors Pille Runnel, ethnologist and PhD in Media and Communication, is a research director at the Estonian National Museum. Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt is an associate professor at the University of Tartu Insti- tute of Journalism, Communication and Information Studies and research associate at the Estonian National Museum. www.peterlang.com Democratising the Museum Pille Runnel / Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (eds.) Democratising the Museum Reflections on Participatory Technologies Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Democratising the museum : reflections on participatory technologies / Pille Runnel / Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (eds.). pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-3-631-64916-9 - ISBN 978-3-653-03972-6 (E-book) 1. Museums and community. 2. Museums-Technological innovations. 3. Museum techniques. 4. Museums-Educational aspects. 5. Eesti NSV Riiklik Etnograafiamuuseum. I. Runnel, Pille. II. Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Pille. AM7.D455 2014 069--dc23 2014005518 This book was published with the support of Estonian Science Foundation grant no. 8006 and the Estonian National Museum. English language editor: Daniel Edward Allen Copy-editors: Tuuli Kaalep, Ivi Tammaru Layout: Tuuli Kaalep, Ivi Tammaru Cover photo: Marko Maetamm, „Colourful friends" (1995) © Estonian Authors' Society 2014 ISBN 978-3-631-64916-9 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-03972-6 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/ 978-3-653-03972-6 © Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2014 All rights reserved. PL Academic Research is an Imprint of Peter Lang GmbH. Peter Lang - Frankfurt am Main • Bern • Bruxelles • New York • Oxford • Warszawa • Wien All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. www.peterlang.com Table of Contents Authors 7 Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Pille Runnel The Challenge of Democratising the Museum 9 I Theorising and Analysing Participation Pille Runnel, Taavi Tatsi, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt Who Authors the Nation? The Debate Surrounding the Building of the New Estonian National Museum 19 Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Pille Runnel When the Museum Becomes the Message for Participating Audiences 35 Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Pille Runnel, Agnes Aljas A Multi-Method and Multi-Site Interventionist Approach to Studying Audience Participation in Museums 55 II Museum Audiences as Participants Krista Lepik, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt Handicraft Hobbyists in an Ethnographic Museum - Negotiating Expertise and Participation 77 Linda Lotina Analysis of Participatory Activities in the Museums in Latvia 89 III Struggles of Museum Professional Nico Carpentier Facing the Death of the Author. Cultural Professional’s Identity Work and the Fantasies of Control 111 Taavi Tatsi Identity Struggles of Museum Professionals: Autonomous Expertise and Audience Participation in Exhibition Production 131 Taavi Tatsi, Agnes Aljas Democratising Collections through Audience Participation: Opportunities and Obstacles 149 6 Table of Contents IV Digital Technologies for Participation Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Agnes Aljas Digital Cultural Heritage - Challenging Museums, Archives and Users 163 Nico Carpentier Happily Lost in Virtual Space? 185 Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, Pille Runnel Increasing the Usability of the Museum: Four Studies 203 V Conclusion Pille Runnel, Krista Lepik, Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt Visitors, Users, Audiences: Conceptualising People in the Museum 219 Acknowledgements 239 7 Authors Agnes Aljas is a research secretary at the Estonian National Museum and a PhD student at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu. Her PhD research focuses on changes in the concept of culture. Currently, she is participating as a researcher in the following research projects: “Changing Cultural Dispositions of Estonians through Four Decades: from the 1970s to the Present Time”, “Develop­ ing Museum Communication in the 21st Century Information Environment”, and “Actual Complexity of Cultural Communication and Methodological Challenges of Cultural Research”. Nico Carpentier (PhD) is Associate Professor at the Communication Studies De­ partment at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB - Free University of Brussels) and Lecturer at Charles University in Prague. His theoretical focus is on discourse theory; his research interests are situated in the relationship between the media, journalism, politics and culture, focussing on social domains such as war and con­ flict, ideology, participation and democracy. Krista Lepik (PhD) is a lecturer at the Institute of Social Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences and Education, University of Tartu. Her research interests cover governmentality and cultural participation in museums and libraries, and informa­ tion literacy education in an academic environment. Linda Lotina is a PhD student at the Institute of Social Studies, Faculty of So­ cial Sciences and Education, University of Tartu, and a lecturer at the Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences. Her research focuses on participation issues in (Latvian) museums. Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt (PhD) is an associate professor at the University of Tartu, Institute of Social Studies, and a researcher at the Estonian National Museum. Her interests are Internet user typologies, user-friendly online spaces as possible venues for participation, and participatory applications for organisations. She is leading and participating in several national and international projects. Pille Runnel (PhD) is a research director of the Estonian National Museum. She has worked as a researcher at the Institute of Journalism and Communication, University of Tartu and is carrying out joint research projects with the Institute in the areas of generations in the emerging information society, and museum com­ munication in the context of the information society. Her research interests in­ volve ICT and cross-media usage, and audiences (governance, participation, the 8 Authors digital divide). She has been part of the EU Kids Online research initiative, as well as several research projects on transforming media usage. Her research also involves users and digital cultural heritage, visual anthropology and new muse­ ology. She is responsible for the research agenda and the production of future permanent exhibitions at the Estonian National Museum. Taavi Tatsi (PhD) is an independent researcher formerly affiliated with the Es­ tonian National Museum. His PhD research focused on the transformations of museum-embedded cultural expertise, specifically how audience participation af­ fects museum curatorship and collections. His research is part of the “Developing Museum Communication in the 21st Century Information Environment” research project. 9 The Challenge of Democratising the Museum Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt Pille Runnel 1. The project Democratising the museum is a collection of studies looking at how participation can support museums in the process of becoming more open. We look at the open museum as sharing power with its visitors and stakeholders, but also negotiating professionalism and the role of the museum in a modern society. The societal chal­ lenges that inspire this book are on the one hand related to the need to reinvent the notion of democracy in today’s political crisis, to open up the concept and bring it out of the strictly institutional level of politics. On the other hand, the challenges are to do with increasing technologisation of society, ways of sharing information, communicating and networking with the public. While often the technologies are seen as the solution to the problem of democratisation, the key thesis of this book is that the way technologies are used are far more important. Hence the concept of participatory technologies is under investigation. This is a project book. It draws upon a five-year research project called “Mu­ seum Communication in the 21st Century Information Environment”, carried out at the Estonian National Museum. At the same time, it is much more than a book about one museum research project, one team and one set of participatory