Public participation and agency in art museums

In the art museum field, the term “participation” has come to cover a range of public, institutional and artistic practices ranging from attendance to contribution, collaboration, interpretation and co-creation of artworks. This disparity in the use of the term often leads to problems of communication and expectation within the art institutions themselves and between art museums and their funding bodies, the public and the artists involved. Indeed, participation in art museums is complicated by tensions between the autonomy of the arts and the social engagement of the artist and the institution. In order to clarify these various practices and facilitate debate in the field, my colleague Anna Elffers and I proposed an updated scale of participation specifically adapted to the art museum ( Elffers & Sitzia 2016 ). Building on this work, this chapter analyses how participatory practices in the art field build diverse forms of public agency. I first investigate what public agency is in the context of the art museum and how it relates to key concepts such as empowerment, ownership, knowledge creation and learning. I will also present what kind of agency is created, allowed and acceptable in the art museum. I will then look closely at the relationship between various forms of participatory practices in art museums and agency, focussing on three key types of participatory practices: meaning making, co-creation of artworks or events and participatory collection management activities. For each of these three practices I will investigate - on theoretical grounds - the level of agency, the output and the educational framework of such practices. Investigating participation through agency, this chapter contributes to theoretical debates about the role and impact of participation in the arts.