Museum participation as labor

Abstract

Set in the tradition of museum ethnography, this article looks at museum participation through the lens of labor. Based primarily on interview material, it analyzes the lengthy—and laborious—participatory process behind the creation of “Berlin Global,” an exhibition at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, Germany. The authors explore three aspects of participation related to labor, as identified in their research: the different types of knowledge and experience that participants bring with them, the organization of the participatory work process, and the presentation of the participants' contributions within the exhibition. The authors argue that because museum participation tends to be viewed as an act of civic duty, individually and socially meaningful, the different kinds of labor involved in it are often overlooked, resulting in power imbalances between curators and their external partners. A greater awareness of the labor demanded by participatory work is able to address this problem, decreasing the number of frictions and tensions, and thus making mutual beneficiality, participation's main goal, more achievable.