Transformative Museum Experiences

Following on the volume Museum Experience Design (2018), this book acknowledges the changing role of museums in society with a focus on designing experiences as vehicles for transformation. We look at transformation through a systemic perspective, anchored in the experience that museums offer to visitors. One facet of our exploration regards the museum experience itself as an instrument for change. At this level we conceptualise what we mean by a transformative experience and look at design approaches specifically geared towards inducing transformation. We then turn attention towards the way recent changes in the socio-political and cultural context reverberated in structural and functional changes inside the museum and connected institutions and communities, with shifting museum identities and new forms of cooperation emerging. Finally, we zoom in on the role of technology in the making of transformative museum experiences, looking at opportunities and affordances but also calling for an ethical approach to integration of technology in museum practice.

Introduction. Transformative museum experiences at a time of transformation. - Part 1: Juxtaposition and the liminal exhibit - Inevitable and surprising, at the same time. - Attachments in museum experience design. Displaying relationships and networks of public urban heritage. - Designing One-minute experiences. - Part 2: The changing museum: Structure, social role and relationships. - Transformative experience design in science and technology centres and museums; assumption shifts, co-curation, polyvocality and controversies. - Discovering volunteers as an essential community of practice in small museums in the Netherlands. - Third space literacies and museum learning. - Exhibiting conflict as a transformative strategy: Writing contemporary history with the local community. - Ochre painting workshops as a tool for interactive and sensory museum learning. - Part 3: Supporting technologies. - Preserving immersive experiences as transformative museum experiences. - The Phygital museum ecosystem: Pushing comfort zone boundaries in the visitor museum experience. - Seeing art through the eye of the algorithm: Artificial intelligence in the museum. - Artificial exchange: Chatbots and the ethics of museum experience design.