From self-exploration to self-exploitation in digitally innovative museums

Abstract

The urge for innovation in digitally advanced museums, which is represented as a norm of everyday life and a fitting way for museums to recode and transform themselves into progressive heritage institutions, is strongly linked to their employees – the so-called innovation champions. The importance of self-exploration in these champions’ professional lives motivates them to become more digitally innovative, which, in turn, is associated with increased productivity and job satisfaction. However, it is rarely discussed that this use of their limited time often leads to self-exploitation – harmful practices in the name of a perceived image of Western progress, leading to exhaustion, burnout, and declining quality of life in professional and private settings. The qualitative study described in this article is based on experiences of museum workers in Latvia’s most digitally innovative museums. By drawing attention to museums’ tendency to overlook (self) exploitation that structures the Western notion of progress and the normalisation of employee sacrifices in its pursuit, the author aims not only to contribute a critical perspective to the discourse on the positive bias towards digital advancement, but also to emphasise that museums themselves might unwittingly assume a new form of colonial practice in the era of postcolonial thought.