Graça Filipe is a leading figure in museology and industrial heritage research. In this interview, she reflects on the critical state of industrial heritage preservation in Portugal. Drawing on her experience at the Seixal Municipal Ecomuseum, she revisits processes of musealisation and heritagisation, highlighting the case of the Vale de Milhaços Gunpowder Factory. She also discusses the concept of industrial heritage and revisits participatory methodologies developed primarily during the 1990s, presenting the latter as examples of approaches grounded in ecomuseology and community involvement. While acknowledging the progress made in industrial heritage research and enhancement, she warns of the irreversible losses that continue to occur and argues for the urgent need for a national public policy. Such a policy should promote coordinated action among heritage and museum national authorities, associations, academic institutions, and local authorities in order to strengthen the preservation, research, and enhancement of this heritage.
Intervención: International Journal of Conservation, Restoration and Museology was established in 2009 and is published by the Escuela Nacional de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía “Manuel del Castillo Negrete” (ENCRyM), based in Mexico City and affiliated with the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH). This article analyses the content published in the journal between 2010 and 2024, with particular attention to contributions addressing museum-related issues and the dissemination–musealisation of cultural heritage. The specific objectives of the study were to identify the presence of these themes throughout the journal’s first 15 years, to examine the ways in which the museum field has been understood within ENCRyM, and to reflect on how museology and the dissemination–musealisation of cultural heritage have been conceptualised, practised and published in this institutional context. For analytical purposes, the corpus was divided into two periods: the First Series (Issues 1–20, 2010–2020) and the New Series (Issues 21–30, 2020–2024). The analysis considered the presence of museum and cultural heritage themes, cover artwork, types of contributions and approaches, authorship (profiles, institutional affiliation and provenance), among other aspects. The findings indicate that museum and cultural heritage topics have undergone a gradual process of consolidation within Intervención, reflecting the parallel development of museology as a profession with an increasingly prominent presence in both the national and the international academic landscape.
The evaluation of interpretive resources in art exhibitions represents a significant challenge for visitor studies, particularly when such resources aim not only to convey information but also to foster subjective and reflective experiences among visitors. This article presents a methodological reflection on a visitor study designed to investigate the use, visitor appraisal, and impact of the interpretive resources developed for an exhibition project at the Museum of Navarra, Spain. Following a pilot phase, fieldwork was conducted between March and April of 2024 using a mixed-methods approach that combined gallery observation, questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and personal meaning mapping. The analysis examines the potential and limitations of these instruments in a museum context, paying particular attention to the challenges involved in evaluating interpretive proposals focused on visitor experience rather than information transmission. The findings show that combining different techniques provides complementary insights into the use and appraisal of interpretive resources, although assessing their impact poses greater methodological challenges. In particular, personal meaning mapping emerges as a highly promising tool, while also proving to be the most experimental and difficult instrument to implement under ordinary visiting conditions. The study offers practical guidance for future evaluations of interpretive resources, provides recommendations for improving both these resources and the visitor experience in art museums, and highlights the value of collaboration between museums and universities in advancing research in this field.
