Encoding object-oriented democracy in Swedish museums: implementing method of the thing in exhibition-making

Abstract

ABSTRACT As museums face conflicting demands on maintaining and caring for their collections, opening for visitor engagement, and being more inclusive in their practice, new approaches are needed to museum work. This article introduces a democratic and inclusive approach focusing on the relational properties of the artefact – the Method of the Thing (Tigenes Metode). We use interviews with different museum professionals in Sweden. The method allows knowledge to emerge from the convergence of different actors within and outside the museum who negotiate their expertise, (professional) roles and technical infrastructure of the museum by foregrounding the object rather than the curators’ story. We use the encoding/decoding model to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the method where centring the object allows for a process of democratisation and polyvocality to take shape, thus allowing divergent narratives to emerge.