Re-imagining Museums in a Pandemic: New Governance For a Living, Open and Sustainable Museum

Abstract By means of a case study, this article presents the need to develop a contextual museology that allows models of museum management to be adapted in times of transition or crisis. It also defends the need to implement knowledge-management processes that advocate systematising and documenting the memory of museum entities, which can in turn serve as a foundation for planning museum practices amid crises. Despite the challenges caused by its involuntary closure, for Colombia’s Centro de Museos de la Universidad de Caldas (Museum Centre at the University of Caldas) the pandemic became the ideal setting to carry out, behind closed doors, an assessment of 25 years of continuous work. What should be done with a closed museum? The institutional response was to begin an internal evaluation process to re-imagine the museum in a future era of post-pandemic work. The Centro de Museos therefore developed a new museum plan, financed by a grant from the Colombian government's Ministry of Culture. Turning to online modes of working posed a challenge on the implementation of participatory methodologies that were used at different organisational levels, such as the creation of collaborative murals, interviews and online discussions. These exercises made it possible to integrate different perspectives and visions of the museum and to recover lost memories that contributed to a new conceptualisation of the university museum.