Museums and the ‘new museology’: theory, practice and organisational change

Abstract

The widening of roles and expectations within cultural policy discourses has been a challenge to museum workers throughout Great Britain. There has been an expectation that museums are changing from an ‘old’ to a ‘new museology’ that has shaped museum functions and roles. This paper outlines the limitations of this perceived transition as museum services confront multiple exogenous and endogenous expectations, opportunities, pressures and threats. Findings from 23 publically funded museum services across England, Scotland and Wales are presented to explore the roles of professional and hierarchical differentiation, and how there were organisational and managerial limitations to the practical application of the ‘new museology’. The ambiguity surrounding policy, roles and practice also highlighted that museum workers were key agents in interpreting, using and understanding wide-ranging policy expectations. The practical implementation of the ‘new museology’ is linked to the values held by museum workers themselves and how they relate it to their activities at the ground level.

Keywords:

• UK museum services
• museum management
• cultural policy
• ‘new museology’
• museum workers
• organisational change

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the staff in all of the museums and galleries who allowed us to interview them. Responsibility for the content of this paper remains with both authors and should not be considered to be representative of the views or opinions of anybody other than themselves. The research in this paper was supported by the British Academy (Grant SG111848) and by the Economic and Social Research Council to whom our thanks is extended.

Notes on contributors

Vikki McCall is a lecturer in Social Policy and Housing at the University of Stirling. She has previously worked as a researcher for Museums Galleries Scotland trying to increase the quality and value of cultural evidence throughout the museums sector in Scotland. Vikki is also an associate lecturer for the Open University and has published work around social policy, social inclusion, museums, policy makers’ perceptions of culture and cultural data.

Clive Gray is an associate professor in Cultural Policy Studies at Warwick University and is the course director of the MA in International Cultural Policy and Management. He has published widely on the politics of cultural policy, the role of the state in managing cultural policy and public policy and the museums sector. He is currently undertaking research on structure and agency in the museums sector which informs the research for the current paper.

Notes

1. Full detail of the research methodologies employed in this paper, including categories of museums and staff, and methods of analysis can be obtained from the authors. Interviewees have been given the opportunity to check the accuracy and contextualisation of directly quoted comments.

2. The UK refers collectively to Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The current paper is restricted to Scotland, England and Wales which collectively form Great Britain.

3. These quasi-governmental organisations are intended to place a distance between elected politicians and implementing agencies, commonly referred to as the arm's-length principle.

4. These were often involved in fundraising and community engagement activities.

5. This is itself a rather nebulous term but includes ideas of community and individual inter-action to provide services, either through activities such as individual volunteering or through taking over the direct provision of services by communities. The extent to which it has actually been put into practice is currently unclear but as one curator (England) said about the Big Society idea, ‘nobody has the money for it and nobody cares’, indicating some of the difficulties that are associated with it.