Interview with Nora Sternfeld, Author of Das radikaldemokratische Museum

ABSTRACT

Das radikaldemokratische Museum offers a new vision of the museum as a place of radical democratic potential, where feminist, queer, and post-colonial critiques can challenge long-standing assumptions about representation. Its author, museum theorist, educator, and curator Nora Sternfeld, centers her work on negotiations of conflicting positions, arguing that museums have the inherent potential to be political spaces. The Journal of Museum Education’s Assistant Editor, Nathaniel Prottas, interviewed Sternfeld about the book, which has been deeply influential in the German-speaking world.

Das radikaldemokratische Museum By Nora Sternfeld De Gruyter, 2018

KEYWORDS:

• Museum education theory
• queer theory
• anti-racist pedagogy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

About the author

Nathaniel Prottas, Ph.D. is the Assistant Editor of the Journal of Museum Education and Director of Education and Visitor Services at the Wien Museum, Austria. His publications have appeared in journals such as the Journal of Aesthetic Education and the JME. He teaches courses on museum education at the University of Vienna, The Technical University Dortmund, and Masaryk University, Brno.

Notes

1 Sternfeld, Das radikaldemokratische Museum, 65.

2 Munley and Roberts, “Are Museum Educators Still Necessary?” 29–39.

3 Kai-Kee, Latina, and Sadoyan, Activity-based Teaching in the Art Museum.

4 Phelan, Unmarked, 10.

5 Griesser-Stermscheg, Tabu Depot. Das Museumsdepot in Geschichte und Gegenwart.

6 Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country.

7 Gila and Sternfeld, “Glauben Sie mir. Kein Wort. Die Entwicklung der Kunstvermittlung zwischen documenta X und documenta 14.”