Imagine a place where global climate challenges are tackled through the lens of local stories and art. Building on scholarship that frames museums as 'lifeboats' and 'pathways' through the climate crisis, this article demonstrates the unique strengths of regional institutions: their deep community embeddedness, local knowledge, and capacity for agile, place-based engagement. Regional institutions are closely attuned to the social and ecological specificities of their localities. They are thus well-positioned to translate complex global environmental challenges into locally meaningful narratives and actions. Through multi-modal exhibitions and participatory programming, they foster climate literacy, cultural continuity, and collective agency. Using the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery, this article demonstrates how regional institutions can help translate global dilemmas into local solutions through dynamic, ongoing, multi-modal engagement strategies that strengthen community understanding and resilience. In doing so, they emerge as critical infrastructures in navigating an increasingly uncertain ecological future.
This paper examines how affective learning can be intentionally cultivated in curatorial education, focusing on the professional development of future gakugei-in (museum curators in the Japanese context). Moving beyond knowledge-centred training, it advances a model of 'learning to feel', in which affect, reflection and relational understanding shape professional formation. Drawing on Dewey's philosophy of experience, Sch & ouml;n's reflection-in-action, Hooper-Greenhill's post-museum pedagogy and recent work on relational empathy, the study frames emotional resonance as both pedagogical method and mode of knowing. Methodologically, it integrates thematic analysis of student reflections with autoethnographic observation of the Personal History Exhibition (PHE), complemented by field-based museum learning experiences. Findings show that affective engagement fosters relational empathy, dialogic awareness and a cultivated capacity to respond to others. The paper argues that the Japanese notion of aidagara (betweenness) deepens global discussions by positioning responsiveness - not mastery - as a foundation for curatorial professional growth.
The exhibition 'Huir con lo puesto' (25 October 2024-2 February 2025) at the Museo del Traje introduces a museological approach grounded in personal testimonies. Developed with UNHCR-ACNUR, it places the experiences of refugees at the centre of the exhibition narrative. The research for this paper was conducted through a focus group with the exhibition's curators, aiming to examine their working process and curatorial decision-making. In contrast, the exhibition itself was developed through interviews carried out by the curators with refugees, whose stories directly inspired the design and creation of the pieces on display. This translation of lived experiences into material forms enables visitors to engage emotionally with the realities of forced displacement. The project reshapes curatorial practice toward participatory research and shared authorship. It also demonstrates how collaboration with migrant communities fosters inclusion, raises social awareness, and broadens institutional narratives by embedding marginalised voices within the museum discourse.
A recent report by ICOM, Museum Storage Around the World (2024), highlighted that a vast percentage of museum collections in storage - sometimes as much as 90%. Increasingly, the discussions around how to manage these collections on a practical level are also engaging with the question of how to promote access to collections. To inform effective collections access strategies, this article takes a longer view, considering how storage has become so problematic for museums and what meaningful access looks like in the current UK museum sector. It also reflects on the current forms of museum collections storage through the lens of accessibility and suggests new categories for these spaces: Visible, Visitable, Researcher Responsive, Community Centred and Closed or Deep storage. This research draws on the findings from a UKRI-funded research project 'Building Heritage Infrastructure' which explored the relationship between community, locality and materiality in the museum storeroom.
This article examines how Chinese museums deploy affective pedagogies to cultivate citizenship and moral subjectivity. Drawing on ethnographic research at the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou, it explores how sound, touch, and spatial design translate ideological values into embodied experiences of national belonging. Focusing on collective performances and craft workshops, the study shows how participants are guided to 'feel properly', expressing reverence, pride, and gratitude as moral emotions aligned with the state-oriented citizenship ideals. Integrating concept of emotional governance with affect theory, the article argues that museum education operates as a form of affective governance, transforming emotion into a technology of civic formation. At the same time, participants' ambivalent responses, from sincere engagement to pragmatic enjoyment, reveal the nuanced negotiations through which civic values are sensed, enacted, and reinterpreted within China's post-socialist cultural institutions.
This paper critically evaluates 'Transformers: Radical Change in Museums', a workforce development programme led by the UK Museums Association (2014-2018). Aimed at mid-career professionals, the initiative sought to empower individuals as agents of change in their organisations within a socially engaged agenda. Drawing on interviews with 35 participants in 2018 and 24 follow-on interviews in 2022, the study examines the impact of Transformers on individuals and organisations. While the programme was successful in transforming individuals, forging a 'values-led' professional identity, participants faced structural barriers to making change in their institutions. The discussion explores how hope structured the programme and how 'hope labour' shaped workers' experiences in the context of stagnating careers. The paper argues that individualised approaches to organisational change in museums are limited, and that broader systems approaches are required. The findings contribute to wider discussions about museum workforce, mid-career experiences and the dynamics of sector change.
This systematic review aimed to examine how autistic children learn in museums and informal educational settings, identifying factors for an effective learning experience and areas requiring further research. Following PRISMA guidelines, a structured search was conducted in Scopus and ERIC databases, covering studies published from 1995 to 2025. The inclusion criteria focused on empirical studies that discussed learning experiences of autistic children or adolescents in museums and informal educational environments. Sixteen studies met the criteria and were included in the synthesis. The findings highlight that effective learning can be shaped by three interconnected factors: (a) the alignment between tailored learning interventions, (b) sensory-adapted environments, and (c) the involvement of supporting individuals such as families and professionals. These insights align with the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), which approaches learning as a dynamic activity system. This review provides practical guidance for designing inclusive museum experiences and identifies priorities for future research.
This article develops a framework for understanding museums as curated polyrhythmic environments across physical and digital spaces by linking research on the mediatization of museums and mediated everyday life. Focusing on ACMI, Australia's national museum of screen culture, it examines how two digital exhibition devices mediate rhythms of movement, attention, and social interaction. Based on a study conducted in spring 2025, combining observations with visitor interviews, the paper explores how these devices shape engagement within different visitor dynamics. Lefebvrian rhythmanalysis provides the theoretical and methodological lens to connect institutional curation with embodied visitor practices. The concept of 'curated polyrhythms' is introduced to capture how curatorial strategies, digital affordances, and visitor practices converge to produce intersecting, and at times conflicting, rhythms. By theorizing how visitors navigate these, the article contributes to debates on digital mediation and curation, highlighting visitor agency and rethinking curatorial authority in digitally mediated environments.
This article examines the accessibility, transparency, and interconnectivity of provenance research in museum collections. While the field originated in efforts to document Nazi-era looting, it now also addresses colonial contexts, state succession, and broader cultural heritage claims. Drawing on web-harvested data from 42 departments across 14 institutions in Germany and the United States, the article proposes a systematic framework for evaluating provenance information. The findings reveal differences in data quality, completeness, and standardization, alongside structural constraints shaped by institutional workflows, technology, and resources. Although digitization has expanded public access to provenance information, we still observe significant gaps between professional guidelines and institutional practices. The article therefore calls for standardized data models, interoperable infrastructures, and sustainable strategies for provenance documentation. By identifying both persistent barriers and emerging opportunities, it underscores the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration, shared standards, and wider public accessibility to strengthen equitable and trustworthy stewardship of cultural heritage.
Museums are increasingly called upon to contribute to the creation of more sustainable futures. Yet, little attention has been paid to how science museums, in particular, might transform themselves into spaces for thinking about and imagining positive futures. This article is a case study from the Danish Museum of Science and Technology, which explores how an arts-based science communication performance workshop enabled participants to engage differently with sustainability issues such as climate change and changing landscapes. The analysis demonstrates how incorporating more-than-human perspectives, by granting agency to objects on display and introducing elements that are otherwise unfamiliar in a science museum setting, can prompt participants to think about futures in new and unexpected ways. The article argues that such approaches enable science museums to move beyond a primary focus on the past and instead become spaces for futures thinking, thereby positioning them as key actors in shaping more sustainable futures.
As important informal learning venues, museums hold unique value in fostering parent-child interaction and cultural transmission. However, traditional exhibitions often rely heavily on visual communication, struggling to fully engage children while overlooking differences in sensory preferences and cognitive approaches between parents and children. To explore how multisensory experiences can enhance the quality of parent-child interactions within families, this study employed a mixed-methods approach within the context of cultural heritage exhibitions. Through behavioral observation, surveys, and discourse analysis involving 194 parent-child pairs, it examined the effects of visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory stimuli on interaction behaviors, emotional engagement, and satisfaction. Findings reveal that visual and tactile interactions dominate in attracting attention and stimulating engagement, whereas auditory and olfactory experiences show lower involvement without interactive support. This study offers empirical support and practical guidance for designing interactive exhibitions, underscoring the importance of visual-tactile cross-modal strategies in improving the family museum experience.
This study aimed to identify challenges and lessons learned in protecting cultural assets from fire and to develop policy recommendations. A qualitative case study was conducted on the 2023 fire at the Balat Toy Museum in & Idot;stanbul through the lens of disaster management. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the museum director, a museum employee, and two firefighters involved and corroborated by the official fire brigade report, on-site observations, online news articles, and visual documentation. Thematic analysis was conducted before, during, and after the fire. The fire ignited at 4:53 a.m. due to a failure in the museum's electrical circuit. It rapidly engulfed and severely damaged the historic building housing the museum and over 10,000 toys and handcrafted dioramas collected over 50 years due to the building's wooden structure, weak audible alarm, malfunctioning sprinklers, lack of routine electrical inspections, combustible collections, and absence of personnel. The museum's lack of a disaster management strategy left it unprepared. This case study demonstrates the risk of substantial loss of cultural assets due to fire, highlights insufficient preparedness among cultural heritage institutions, and addresses a gap in the literature by examining fire impacts on small-scale cultural structures and proposing suitable disaster management strategies.
Queer perspectives challenge entrenched authority, embrace difference and transformation, resist linear temporalities, and operate at the margins of dominant social worlds. More than an identity or politics, queerness serves as a method for unsettling norms, offering critical implications for museum governance. To become genuinely diverse and open, museums must be queered as institutions of knowledge production. Imagining a queer utopian museum helps sustain transformative momentum and reflexivity. As Robenalt, E. E. M. (2024. The Queer Museum: Radical Inclusion and Western Museology. London: Routledge) shows, several museums have experimented with queer practices-including queer-themed exhibitions, queering collections, community participation, curatorial interventions, staff restructuring, and queer feminist approaches-allowing visitors to engage with queerness in fluid ways. Yet aspirations toward queer utopia also reveal fractures: separatist impulses, internal tensions, and competing visions of queerness make moments of queer failure not only possible but, in some sense, inevitable.
This study investigates how gender and age influence emotional engagement with cultural heritage artifacts through the analysis of emotion vocabulary. Emotion annotations from 120 respondents across 60 artifacts yielded 141 distinct aesthetic terms encompassing both basic and nuanced emotions. Statistical analyses and semantic clustering along valence-arousal dimensions revealed significant age-related differences and moderate gender-based tendencies. Applying a six-dimensional taxonomy of aesthetic emotions further demonstrated clear demographic contrasts: female respondents more frequently used perceptual and affective-aesthetic words, whereas male respondents tended to employ analytical and compositional language; older adults emphasized moral and contemplative meanings, while younger respondents expressed sensory and curiosity-driven emotions. Analysis of emotional consistency also identified visual and symbolic features that fostered shared affective interpretations across groups. These findings show that demographic background mediates affective experience and provide a conceptual foundation for emotion-aware indexing and personalized curatorial strategies in digital heritage contexts.
This article examines the development of the heritage discourse surrounding Canada's Indian Residential Schools (IRS) after Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded in 2015. It analyses how this heritage is being presented in three major museums: the Royal Alberta Museum, the Canadian Museum of Human Rights, and the National Indigenous Residential School Museum, examining how the IRS is discursively and affectively presented in these museums, and how they create a corrective historiography in cognitive and affective ways. The article begins by reviewing the history of the TRC and the historical amnesia surrounding the schools, and the shift towards acknowledging this previously ignored and forgotten phenomenon. Then, it examines each museum as a case study, analysing the discursive and affective elements found in the IRS exhibits. In doing this, this article tracks the turn-to-commemoration of this hitherto ignored history and examines the current shaping of heritage about Indian Residential Schools.
This article examines the persistently unresolved challenges of decolonising Australian cultural institutions through a case study of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) in Launceston, Tasmania. Despite growing scholarly advocacy for inclusivity, repatriation, and cultural sovereignty, museum decolonisation efforts remain uneven and fraught. Drawing on two years of community and staff perspectives (2020-2022), this study interrogates the socio-cultural tensions and institutional dynamics that complicate progress. It argues that decolonisation is not a linear trajectory, but an iterative process marked by friction, where genuine transformation depends on redistributing decision-making power and embracing inclusive, participatory practices. Bakhtin's theoretical framework, Dialogic Imagination, offers critical insight into this process, revealing how institutional voices, silences and disruptions can serve as fertile sites for contested meaning-making, where alternative voices inevitably arise, and challenge dominant narratives and momentarily reconfigure power through messy, non-linear acts of cultural reckoning.
