https://phaidra.kunstuni-linz.at/o:3548 In Search of New Structures - Negotiating Design Practices Towards a Participatory Museum Cordin, Giulia Giulia Cordin text eng Dissertation, 2024, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International Supervision: Amalia Barboza, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen, Eva Leitolf Abstract The new definition of museums, approved by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in August 2022, makes audience participation the center of the institutional mandate. Participation is seen as the ideal means to reconnect with audiences and address the criticisms of exclusion, irrelevance, and elitism directed at contemporary museums. However, the generic use of the term to describe a wide variety of experiences has emptied up its meaning, as analyzed by several scholars in recent years (Miessen 2010; Mörsch 2011; Sternfeld 2018). Their critical argument relates to an understanding of participation and democracy as based on harmonious and unanimous consensus (Mouffe 2000, Ranciére 2004). This thesis is grounded in an agonistic understanding of participation and seeks to engage audiences in dialogue in a way that has an impact on the institutional structure. Through conversations with professionals, namely scholars, curators, and museum staff, I’ve mapped existing practical approaches to participation. The thesis also introduces a practice-based research project in collaboration with Museion, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bolzano, which established specific collaborations between stakeholders, the public, and museum staff by re-defining the museum’s public events. The case study explores possible new institutional structures for participatory engagement. Central to my argument is the role of design in institutional transformation. The research of this thesis argues for an organizational transformation of the museum guided by design inquiry, challenging implicit premises, and relying on participatory and collaborative practices. While the traditional understanding of design is typically solution-oriented and does not often question the underlying premises of the practice being considered, drawing on Junginger (2015), I reconfigure design as primarily an organizational activity rather than merely a supplementary service. Redefining the design-discipline within a broader theoretical framework establishes an interdisciplinarity that prioritizes socio-political access to every project. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://phaidra.kunstuni-linz.at/api/object/o:3548/download 10.57697/1DVE-6K76 application/pdf 41.54 MB 2024