turn to practice, seen in much recent work in science and technology studies, has much to offer the study of museums by tempering the preoccupation of cultural theory with discourse, language, and meaning. Attention to practice, seen as emergent and performative (Pickering 1995), allows scholar-practitioners to be more attentive to the complex organizational interplay of things, people, and organizations with their constantly changing networks of social and material agency. Analyzing scientific practice in laboratories as the “specific, repeatable sequence of activities on which scientists rely in their daily work” (1995, 4), Pickering highlights “the emergence in time of resistances,” and “the success or failure of ‘accommodations’ to resistances.” This “temporal structuring of practice as a dialectic of resistance and accommodation” is called the “mangle of practice” (1995, xi). A broad relational approach to museum practice as a messy process of modeling, planning, failures, compromises, and solutions, a back-and-forth “dance” of agency between human and nonhuman actors, can be seen in many of the contributions to this volume. Chapters by several authors (see especially Jimson on interpretive planning, Chapter 23; Dean on exhibition production, Chapter 16; and Pickering on repatriation processes, 20) speak of trials, experiments, and successive phases of development, grounded in specific sites and circumstances, in which people, objects, and institutions are mangled together in complex, ongoing struggles to realize their goals in the midst of all manner of social, economic, and environmental forces.
What does practice theory have to offer the study of professional practice/s? Theorizing museum work as a social practice brings a more diverse range of professional activities into view as important arenas of analysis. The chapters in this volume explore a wide array of practice, from the public relations, community engagement, visitor research, exhibitions, and public programs found “front of house” (Chong, Davidson, Young, Whitelaw, and Beier-de Haan, Reeve and Woollard, Jimson) to the planning, collections, conservation, and curatorial practice that go on “back of house” (Gardner, Simmons, Merriman, Arnold, Norton- Westbrook, Sully). Some of the chapters deal with topics behind the scenes that are perhaps not appreciated by outside viewers or visitors: for example, exhibition development (Dean), exhibition design (Spock), and repatriation and restitution (Bienkowski; Pickering), as well as others previously mentioned, such as economics and finance (Silberberg and Lord), and value and measurement (Scott), while others touch on topics that are vitally important but not widely scrutinized in museum studies, such as policy and legislation (Selwood and Davies), mission and purpose (Fleming), and collection management systems (Chapman).
Practice theory also helps us see how the everyday doings and sayings of professionals in museums is not simply a codified activity but a constantly evolving, lived phenomenon that is bound up with unequal social relations. An awareness of the social and political responsibility of museum work is essential so that museum practice does not become atomized, self-interested, and conservative. The museum profession still requires standards and structured professional development, but a grounded theory of museum practice provides a more balanced, flexible, and fluid counter to the tendency to freeze professional work in rules, and a reminder of the world beyond the workplace. Politics is at least implicit in many of the chapters in this volume but is more central to some, including Selwood and Davies on regulatory frameworks, Chong on arts marketing, and Jimson on exhibition interpretation, concept development, and writing. Both Nightingale and Shelton highlight the politics of practice in their Afterwords, Nightingale in particular reviewing the “continuing struggle for diversity and equality.”
By foregrounding action and performance, and by exploring human patterns of behavior in the workplace, practice theory reveals embodied actions, meaning formed by doing, and the performance of everyday work. This has the capacity to make practitioners aware of aspects of their practice that they might have over- looked or deemed inconsequential. While much research remains to be done, this volume begins to address this for several areas of museum work: see for example the chapters by Wellington and Oliver (Chapter 25) on the practice of digital heritage in museums and related sectors, Merriman’s strategy for reviving disciplinary collecting (Chapter 11), the models for new ethics-based museum practice presented by Marstine, Dodd, and Jones after collaborative research with practitioners (Chapter 4), and the points raised by Arnold (Chapter 14) and Norton-Westbrook (Chapter 15) concerning “new” curatorial practice (based on seminars, surveys, and interviews). It seems to me that there is an urgent need for this engaged practice-based research because the sector in many countries, especially outside of Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, is still rather fragmented with workforces who come to museums from different backgrounds (usually without degrees in museum studies) and with little sense of unified professional identity.
As well as the traditional focus on the content of museum collections and style of exhibitions, then, we need more research on what people do: in-depth empirical studies of staff at work in a greater variety of jobs and functions within the museum, not just directors, curators, and educators (on this point see: Higgs, McAllister, and Whiteford 2009). In the chapters that follow, contributors fill in these gaps in museum practice: including fundraising, retail and entry charges, trust boards and local government, registration, collection care and storage, project management, exhibition design and display, leadership and management, learning and public pro- grams, and many other roles, jobs, and processes across the organization.
One way of advancing this agenda is to reconceive aspects of current museum practice as research.4 This need not be restricted to the typically self-directed, historical or theoretical academic inquiry, or to the rather limited internal desktop “research” and reporting conducted within museums, but should be directed at the whole of the operations of the institution, and conducted in ways that are accessible, strategic, and relevant to a broad audience of professionals, stakeholders, and public. Good examples are provided in this volume by Merriman (Chapter 11), who talks about disciplinary research and collecting as a strategic and thematic exercise for the whole museum, by Gardner (Chapter 9) who puts a case for an intellectual rationale for developmental collections planning, and by Davidson (Chapter 22) who sees visitor research underpinning all the museum’s work rather than as sim- ply a crude marketing exercise. If museums are the site of research and analysis, and if the findings of this research inform university teaching and professional development programs, then practice will become a more important part of museum studies, grounding and consolidating it to serve better academics, stu- dents, professionals, and indeed museums themselves. It is hoped that the chapters in this volume are a step toward this goal.
Notes
1 1 ICOM provides guidance on professional education through ICTOP (International Committee for the Training of Personnel), which was founded in 1968. See http://network.icom.museum/ictop/L/10, accessed September 12, 2014. See also “Special Report: Training Museum Professionals.” ICOM News 66 (2013): 12–23.
2 2 For the ICOM code of ethics, see http://icom.museum/the-vision/code-of-ethics,
