Thinking things through: reviving museum research

Like many who started out as an ‘assistant curator’, I came to work in museums after years of academic study. Evolving some and swapping other habits formed whilst at university has mostly suited my aptitudes and appetites. But a puzzle emerged: how might I hang on to the invigorating, indeed intoxicating practices of research? After a quarter century of being involved with projects that attempted working solutions to this museological conundrum, the following speculations outline a more considered response. On taking over as its director, Ian Blatchford bravely criticised previous decades of activity at the Science Museum: he feared that they betrayed the lack of ‘a clear intellectual agenda’, and signalled his intention instead to return to a ‘classic art museum model of doing great exhibitions based on real research on our own collection’ (Stephens, 2012, p 37). Blatchford is right, the vibrancy of any museum (no matter what its subject) is emphatically expressed through the vitality of its investigation-led programming. This is how we come to judge its ability to inspire visitors to spend their time fruitfully thinking things through and out loud. For museums need to be places where people (both visiting and working) are able to study rather than just learn; and this should be possible without turning them into the earnest, elitist institutions that these ponderous words might suggest. As the following will make clear, I am optimistic about how much could be done in the spirit of research within curious and adventurous public museums.

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