A Museum for All
Identity and difference in the educational and mediation work of museums
My thesis examines the configuration of museum-identity-difference relationships by studying the effects of museums' management of cultural diversity through their educational and mediation work. To this end, my research is based on the premise that a museum, as an institution, is a product of colonial modernity that operates as a device that legitimises universalist identity narratives while simultaneously constructing difference (Preciado, 2019).
The objective is to analyse how educational and mediation practices in museums can contribute to cultural homogenisation and social inequalities, while also having the potential to generate spaces for critical reflection and experimentation with non-hegemonic and less asymmetric forms of relationships between museums and their audiences. It also seeks to provide conceptual, methodological, and technical tools that can help museums carry out a process of institutional review and transformation. To this end, my thesis engages with critical mediation studies, postcolonial and decolonial theories, theories that intersect with critical race theory, critical pedagogies, and intersectionality theories.
Several political declarations have been made recently at national and international levels which show a commitment to the decolonization of museums: among them, the new ICOM definition of a museum in 2022; the plan to decolonise state museums in Spain in 2024; and the Catalan government's 2017 national strategic plan Museums 2030. However, these intentions are based on previous works revising the idea of the museum as a colonial institution that produces identity and difference, which have had little impact in professional and academic spheres, both internationally (Mörsch, 2016) and in Spain and Catalonia (Sánchez & Gutiérrez, 2023; Carrillo, 2024). Furthermore, such reflection has so far been limited mainly to issues related to representation and the management of diversity.
My thesis aims to scrutinise this process of revising the museum as an institution by grounding it in educational and mediation practices. It also seeks to broaden the scope of analysis on diversity in museums - shifting it from the politics of representation in their exhibitions and programs to focusing on the study of the conditions that enable or hinder educational and mediation practices to have agency within the institutional framework to generate counter-hegemonic forms of relationships between the museum and its audiences.
My research addresses the specific case of a national museum, given its role as a key institution in the creation of dominant identity narratives. Specifically, I will study the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), a key national institution in shaping the Catalan institutional network of museums and national identity.
I have a BA in Art History (Universitat de Barcelona) and a MA in Humanities (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya). Since 2003, I have been working in the field of visual, transdisciplinary and collaborative arts from practices such as artistic research, mediation and education. I am currently in charge of the design and implementation of the new area of mediation and education at the contemporary arts centre Santa Mònica, Barcelona. Among other professional roles, I have previously been responsible for the conception and operation of the artistic research area at the artistic research and production centre Hangar. In addition I have worked as a exhibition curator for the Santa Mònica arts centre; programmer of artistic mediation activities for the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB); independent researcher; and lecturer at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.