“problematic” because it emerged from a “distanced elaboration of theory rather than from an embedded working through of museum practices” (2013, 224). In contrast, their research project at Tate, London was situated in the “space between the production of knowledge about the museum produced by the academy and the reproduction of knowledge in the practices of the museum” (2013, 16), including the “know-how of operational practices and know-why of strategic knowledge” (2013, 221).
Developing a postcritical museum studies for the twenty-first century, one that incorporates practice as an integral element in the study of museums, involves not only (re)fashioning theoretical frameworks, and particularly the social and cultural dimensions of theory, but also taking account of the diversity of current practice. Alongside the theorizing of museum work, in this volume scholars attempt to take current practice seriously as an object of analysis in its own right and produce work that reflects the inside view of practitioners.
Also important for developing a new museum studies is the training of museum practitioners in partnership with academic museum studies. As Lois Silverman and Mark O’Neill (2012, 195) point out, some traditionalists working in museums do not appreciate the value of theory at all, seeing it as the abstract product of ivory-tower academics with little relevance to the demands of their working day. Yet, because museum work often leaves little opportunity for reflection on practice, the challenge is for academia to help provide this in order to produce a “deeper and more complex understanding of the museum experience” (2012, 193–194). Part of the problem is how and where the learning takes place – is it best configured as training located in the museum or scholarship in the university? John E. Simmons (2006) writes that in the United States museum studies has matured as a form of university-based training, but there is still a need for standards in professional training that are endorsed by professional museum organizations – a point demonstrated by his chapter in this volume, which sketches out the history, theory, and practice of collection care and management. Simmons believes this problem can be overcome by implementing Suzanne MacLeod’s conceptual model which combines these elements (Simmons 2006, 124, figure 2). This model has been visualized in a diagram below (see Figure 0.1).
The longstanding tension between theory and practice has therefore been partially resolved by an “integrated understanding of museum studies as training, education, research, and practice … in relation to the profession as a whole” (MacLeod 2001, 53). University-based museum studies (and other disciplines) and museum-based practice should form a single hinge between town and gown. MacLeod points out that theory/practice is a false split; in its place she advocates theory-as-practice and vice versa:
The museum practice dimension of museum studies suggests both the incorporation of research findings and training and education (however formal or informal) into the day-to-day practices of the museum as well as the integration of practice- based research findings into training, education and other types of research projects. (2001, 57)
FIGURE 0.1 Integrated model of museum studies incorporating research, practice, training, and education (after Simmons 2006, 124).
This model allows for flexible relationships between the museum sector and training providers – professionals in the field become researchers, and academics are immersed in practice – so that everyone collaborates in the service of common goals. An appealing synthesis of research-led practice and practical theory, it demonstrates that museum studies is “more than the study of museums” (MacLeod 2001, 58). There is strong potential for synergies that can fill the apparent gap: university courses can be aligned with sub-degree industry training, so that short courses and workshops in museums can link up to and count toward degree pro- grams with their placements and internships. This strategic positioning of sector and tertiary provider is in line with international moves to identify standards, core competencies, and a central body of knowledge in order to provide uniformity of skills across art galleries, museum, and heritage organizations (see n. 1 below), and also museums, libraries, archives, and similar organizations (Salzburg Curriculum 2013). There is the potential here – already being realized in Canada, for example (see Carter, Castle, and Soren 2011; Dubuc 2011; Teather 1991; 2009) – for universities and the museum sector to work together in partnership to provide a continuous and embedded learning stream that goes all the way from introductory skills in museum-based training to postgraduate degrees, much as teacher-training for the education sector is integrated within universities.
Practice theory: rethinking professional work
We need to be mindful while focusing on professional practice not to naturalize it as an activity that is somehow beyond the level of inquiry. Evidence-based practice – trying to build future approaches on “what works” – is a defensible approach to “developing” the work of museum professionals, but it risks reproducing the status quo and is often applied in technocratic ways that fail to address the complexity of museum culture. Sometimes unfettered professionalism can be self-interested and lacks the longer view afforded by history and theory. Ironically, untrained “amateurs” are more open to doing things a different way because they are unrestricted by professional guidelines, as was demonstrated in the New Zealand case by the museum resistance to incorporating Indigenous Māori perspectives on the collecting and display of their ancestral culture (McCarthy 2011).
Too often professional practice in museums is seen in somewhat narrow terms as a set of established working methods or ways of doing things that is officially sanctioned and formally described. Here, I want to draw on broader understandings of the term “practice,” as reflected in dictionary definitions, which describe the practicing of a profession as the ongoing pursuit of a craft, or the practicing of a skill to become proficient in it; and to extend this through a critical framework of practice theory that sees practices as the things that people do (Turner 1994). This emphasis on practices (plural) is important in the following chapters where professionals critically reflect on aspects of their practice in the contemporary museum.
To help to denaturalize practice and recognize its plurality, there is some useful academic work that might be drawn upon. What is now called “practice theory” has a long academic genealogy with the work of sociologists such as Bourdieu, who sought to balance the study of people and structures by paying more attention to human action. Bourdieu talked about the “field” of practice, structured social spaces in which agents act according to their “feel” (habitus) for the “game” (Bourdieu 1977). For anthropologists, analyzing cultural practices provided a more complete account of the social world, showing that people are not simply victims of social and economic structures but exercise agency (Sahlins 2005). As Sherry Ortner argues, practice theory situates cultural processes in the grounded social relations of people and institutions, revealing the dialectical connections between the practices of social actors on the ground and the systems that constrain them but which are also capable of being transformed by them (Ortner 2006, 16).
The work of several scholars, responsible for the “practice turn” in contemporary social theory, also provide building blocks for a more theorized model of museum practice. For example, Theodore Schatzki calls practice a “set of actions,” but also a “nexus of doings and sayings” which combines the things that people say and write as well as do (Schatzki, Cetina, and Savigny 2001, 48, 53). This “block” or complex of “body/knowledge/things” is understandable not just to those carrying out the practice but also to observers as “a routinized way in which bodies are moved, objects are handled, subjects are treated, things are described and the world is understood” (Reckwitz 2002, 249–250). As Reckwitz puts it: “Practice theory ‘decentres’ mind, texts and conversation. Simultaneously, it shifts bodily movements, things, practical knowledge and routine
