Foreword

Abstract

Welcome to issue 27 of Museological Review, ‘What if we could trust the ground under our feet? Museums as places of rootedness and response-ability’.

When we chose to consider the question for which this edition is titled, we had no idea just how much more urgent it would become in the intervening months. The continued rise in far-right ideology and nationalisms; the repeal of rights once thought to have been decisively realised; the growing wealth disparity and instability of economic circumstances; the continued spectre of health crises like COVID-19: all of this, and so much more, has led us back to the question of care time and time again.

Each entry within this journal asks this question in some way or another. How are museums recomposing the commons, engaging in the kind of place-making that can make it possible to trust the ground under our feet?