Rethinking Research in the Art Museum

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This fellowship addresses two priorities for Tate and art museums generally: developing research-led practice and greater co-production with audiences. I will examine how practitioner-led co-produced research practices can be embedded in art museums. It has been prompted by a growing interest in framing the art museum as a space for research-led activity that is undertaken by curators and educators working collaboratively with audiences and others. This interest has itself been prompted by criticisms of art museums as sites of cultural exclusivity alongside museum professionals' frustration regarding how their ongoing activities can be understood as research. My project interrogates accepted thinking on research in the art museum by (1) examining and building on a diverse set of existing interdisciplinary literatures not normally used in gallery contexts. And (2) interrogating five comparative case studies of exploratory research-led co-constructed art museum practice. It will develop a context specific framework for practitioner research that foregrounds creativity and innovation and challenges dominant orthodoxies and hierarchies of knowledge. The framework will support museum professionals and researchers to bring about change in art museum research practices. The main output will be a book about emerging models of research being adopted within museums. These models give agency to practitioner researchers who devise programmes, curate exhibitions and facilitate audience engagement and learning and who are, through this, engaged in generating new knowledge and theories. To achieve this, the book will draw on an extensive multidisciplinary literature review and five case studies from the UK, Europe and America to illuminate how different museum practices can be productively understood as research. In building a framework for practitioner research within the art museum, the book will explore connections between research, art practice, curation and learning and draw on theories associated with practice as research and the practitioner scholar. The text will tease out the relevance of these ideas for the art museum sector, reflecting on the challenges inherent in adopting them, but also highlighting the benefits to individuals and institutions of implementing approaches informed by these theories. The framework will be tested with a group of interdisciplinary experts and disseminated to a wider group of museum professionals and researchers via seminars, a research blog, journal articles and the book. The book will thus provide innovative insights and useful guidance for museum professionals and researchers carrying out research in their institutional settings. Overall the fellowship will develop my knowledge, skills and experience enabling me to become a leader in the field of practitioner research in galleries.