The Method of Things, book cover. Photo: The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology

The museums'

knowledge topography

By Henrik Treimo, former first curator at The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology and exhibition director at the Nobel Peace Center

Museology

See and download the book

About the research project

The research project Museums' Knowledge Topography: Collective Knowledge Production as Museum Renewal has been running from 2019 to 2023. The project has been led by The Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology and carried out in collaboration with the Østfold Museums, and has also involved Malmö museums, Tekniska Museet, Gothenburg City Museum and the Swedish National Heritage Board.

"How can museums combine the desire for openness and inclusion with their core activities of management, research and dissemination?"

The project is a further development of the research and development project The Method of Things, which was developed in collaboration with the Museum of Cultural History and the Østfold Museums between 2015 and 2018. The projects are based on the museum's development in LAB since 2014, research on audience involvement, and experiences and experiments carried out at other collaborating museums.

As the title indicates, the project is about method and knowledge development in museums. An overarching goal of this project has been to provide an answer to a dilemma museums have faced over the past four decades. It is about how museums can be open and inclusive places while at the same time being knowledge institutions: How should museums create knowledge in collaboration with the society around them?

To answer this, the project firstly worked to develop a theoretical basis for concepts and practices that museums can use to develop as innovative places for knowledge development. Secondly, practical experiments at a number of museums in Norway and Sweden have helped to show how the museums can engage in continuous involving knowledge development - also around their permanent exhibitions.

The results from the project are now available in a book Things' method - museums' knowledge topography, published by Museumsforlaget 2023. In addition, several related research works have been published during the work on the project.

The project has been carried out with support from the Norwegian Culture Council's museum development program Research in museums.

Publications

Stuedahl, Dagny, Lefkaditou, Ageliki, Ellefsen, Gro Synnøve and Skåtun, Torhild (2021). "Design Anthropological Approaches in Collaborative Museum Curation". Design Studies 75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2021.101021 .

Skåtun, Torhild (2020). "Science, Identity and Belonging: Future Workshop: a structuring tool for co-designing with young people". Young Critics, a guide for children and young people's participation in museums , 45–51.

Treimo, Henrik and Lefkaditou, Ageliki (2020). Curating Blind Spot. In Ric Allsopp and Karen Kipphoff (Eds.), Blind Spot: Staring Down the Void (pp. 169–182). Performance Research Books.