Changing values in the art museum: Rethinking communication and learning

Abstract

In changing times older art-museum values are coming under challenge and new emphasis is being placed on museum-audience relationships. The professional development of new communicative approaches in art museums can be seen as a form of action research. Older modernist models for communication based on the transmission of authoritative subject-based facts to a mass of passive receivers are being superseded by new approaches that acknowledge 'active audiences', constructivist and interpretist learning theories and the complexities of cultural politics. New roles for art museum professionals, the concept of differentiated audiences, the intervention of new voices and the exposition of new narratives offer possibilities for the reconceptualisation of art museums that are rooted in late 19th-century modernist culture.