Abstract

In contemporary societies where shared values, common meanings, disciplinary and institutional authority are under question, where debate and divisiveness are part of everyday life, museums face ongoing challenges to re-evaluate their roles in a diverse an d deeply politicised world. In this article I explore the potential roles museums might play around contentious subjects, in promoting public discourse and social transformation and suggest ways museums might be reconceptualised as dynamic discursive spa ces. Here I draw on the findings from the international research project Exhibitions as Contested Sites – the roles of museums in contemporary society (funded by the Australian Research Council, the Canadian Museums Association with partners the University of Sydney, the Australian Museum and the Australian War Memorial).

Furthermore, using historian Dipesh Chakraparty's pedagogic and performative democratic models, I argue that the way citizens and knowledge have been conceptualised in the political sen se has largely determined the way institutions have dealt with contentious subjects. Rather, I argue institutions might consider re-politicising practice by moving away from an older pedagogic paradigm, view the public sphere as diverse and non-unifiable, position audiences at the centre of debates and create landscapes of diverse and accessible forms of expert and citizen knowledges with opportunities for audiences to reclaim cultural territory and play out their political potential. And in order to develop a nuanced understanding of institutions as political places and controversy as a phenomenon, I conceptualise the institutional context as a hierarchical and complex web of values held by he terogenous actors exhibiting signif icant differences in status, accountabilities and responsibilities and as spaces shaped by particular interests that intersect with debates in other arenas.