The Museum as a Laboratory of Change

Abstract

The article deals with the impact of temporary educational exhibitions in Polish national museums on the nature of the knowledge they produce, protect and disseminate. Analysed data were collected during a year-long, qualitative research study with the use of such tools as in-depth interviews, focus groups, research walks and desk analysis of documentation produced during the creation of the Power of the Museum exhibition at the National Museum in Krakow. The primary research question is how the museum’s ecology of knowledge (Rahder, 2020) reacts when the decision-making order is transformed and a new type of meta-exhibition is built. The article aims to describe the mechanisms that stabilize museum knowledge traditions when the environment in which they operate is changed internally and externally.

Keywords

• museum’s ecology of knowledge
• museum as a laboratory
• temporary exhibitions