Re-imagining Museum Studies

As an emerging interdisciplinary field,museum studies had moved from the margins to the mainstream with the rapid growth of museums in the second half of the twentieth century.However,museum scholars have come to understand ’museum studies’ in very different ways.The pragmatists define it as a practice-oriented course of professional training,while the critical theorists see it as an emerging field of critical studies.Tracing the history of museum studies shows that it is neither too practical nor too theoretical.Rather,in the dialectical process of development,theory and practice are intertwined and constantly interact.Museum studies has developed in three distinct phases over the past 60 years(1960-2020),each with its own characteristics in terms of professional training,theory and practice.The first phase is professional training,which emerged in the 1960 s and 1970 s.Although museum training courses dated back to the late 19 th and the early 20 th centuries,the establishment of the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester in 1966 marked the formal institutionalisation of museum studies.Museum studies in this period aimed to train the professionals needed for museum practice and to solve the empirical problems of everyday museum work.At the theoretical level,museum scholars tended to use the word "museum studies" rather than “museology”,because they considered the former to be a programmatic term and the latter to have a theoretical connotation.The museum community also began to reflect on the social agency of museums and to advocate for the social role of museums.In practice,the emergence of community museums,the differentiation and professionalization of museum functions,and the popularity of blockbuster exhibitions together contributed to the professional development of museum practice.In short,museum studies in this phase had a strong pragmatic orientation,valuing practice and resisting theory;museum studies was based on collections;and the museum was seen as the objective and neutral institution.The second phase is the critical museology of the 1980 s and 1990 s.Under the influence of the "critical turn" in the humanities and social sciences in the 1980 s,museum studies also moved in the direction of theorization and criticism.Due to the association with colonialism,hegemony,otherness,and elite culture,museums were also subjected to critical thought,and a theoretical trend of "critical museology" was formed.In terms of professional training,the content of training became more standardized and academic,with the advent of doctoral degrees and an increase in the number of universities offering museum studies courses.At the theoretical level,scholars from anthropology,cultural studies,sociology,art history,and other disciplines were widely involved in the critical study of museums,and structuralism,Marxism,feminism,Foucauldian theory,and Bourdieusian theory were widely cited by museum scholars to form different theoretical perspectives.At the practical level,the emergence of visitor orientation and changes in educational practices,the emergence of controversial exhibitions,the repatriation of indigenous collections and community engagement,the representation of social inclusion and multiple identities,and the rise of multimedia technologies and the museum experience contributed to the content of critical museum practice.Overall,interdisciplinary studies,theorization and criticality,the one-way transmission of theory,the separation of theory and practice,dualism,museum skepticism,and museum transformationism characterized this phase of museum studies.Finally,there is the post-critical museology of the first two decades of the 21 st century.As museum studies matured and diversified in the 21 st century,the separation between theory and practice that resulted from early theoretical transmission and interdisciplinary studies became a major problem in this period,starting with the museum practice itself,"rather than arriving at the museum with a particular theoretical frame about how the world functioned already in place”,became an elemental theme of the period.Some scholars referred to this idea as "post-critical museology".This phase saw the maturation of professional training,with more universities offering doctoral degrees and an increasing focus on social issues.Theoretical research was devoted to the revision and expansion of previous perspectives,with the materiality-affective turn,new feminism and queer theory,indigenous perspectives and ontologies,the critique and expansion of Foucauldian theory,the revision of Bourdieusian theory,and the introduction of other social theories forming the main components of post-critical museology.At the practical level,museum studies began to advocate affective strategies and multi-sensory museums,self-determined indigenous practices,queering museum practice,and multiple interactivity models.This phase of museum studies was characterized by the two-way interaction of theory,the integration of theory and practice,the expansion of fields of research,the breaking down of dualism,beyond "politics of representation",beyond "inclusion",and museum activism.Museum studies at the professional training phase emphasizes practice and ignores theory.The development of critical museology is intended to correct this shortcoming and focus on the theory of museum studies.However,this also leads to a separation between theory and practice.Post-critical museology in the 21 st century therefore hopes to bridge the gap between museums and academia by combining theory and practice.It is in this process of dialectical development that museum studies continues to renew its ideas and refine its methods.It is impossible to define museum studies in terms of a single paradigm or label;it is neither simply practice-oriented nor simply theoretical;both practice-oriented professional training and scholarly critical analysis are important,but it is the combination of the two and the bridging of the gap between theory and practice that will be at the heart of the future development of museum studies.