Learning From Listening To A Citizen Board

Abstract

Listening is a skill that goes beyond hearing another person’s words. It is an attentive communication process that deeply acknowledges individual backgrounds in making sense of the world. In this paper, we propose a listening approach to museums in their conception as social spaces in the service of society. Departing from the museum’s historic to contemporary concerns for citizen participation, we detail our work with a citizen board in the ‘Right to the Museum?’ project within a comparative study of five Viennese museums. Engaging in intense dialogue through accompanied museum visits and post- surveys, we present our learnings regarding citizens’ situated interpretation strategies in permanent exhibitions and potential discrepancies between museum missions on paper and perceptions on-site. Based on the responses by the citizen board to museum and exhibition scripts, we also reflect on how such a listening approach can be used to pluralise perspectives on cultural heritage and its societal value.

Keywords: museum missions, exhibition scripts, citizen board, listening, identity politics.