I am not a museum, at least not as you know it.
I am an imaginary container for what a new type of cultural space might be.
I’m imaginary for now, because it makes it easier to dream of what we need the most. And the best way to bring the almost impossible into existence, is simply to start describing it out loud.
INFREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:
What’s wrong with the museums we already have?
Nothing.
And Everything.
If you already love going to museums, they can be places of unexpected discoveries, tiny wonders, huge human endeavours. They tell stories, and connect us more deeply to our own cultures and to different cultures, all under the same roof. They are places where elders and youngers and everyone in between can find something to interest them. They are often free to enter.
If you don’t already love going to museums, they can be places of unexpected barriers, micro aggressions, huge human misadventures. They tell some stories and erase others, and superserve some cultures while excluding others. They protect their institutional power and knowledge, keeping it all under the same roof. They are places where elders and youngers find few places to rest, and at the same time are discouraged from noisily running around. And everyone in between finds the object labels are of no interest to them. They are prohibitively expensive to travel to from the edge of town.
Both of these descriptions of museums are true at the same time. There are brilliant people working hard to decolonise, open up and re-imagine museums as participative, relevant spaces for their communities. And there’s an urgent case to be made for designing new types of cultural space that live alongside museums too.
What does the Imaginary Museum do differently?
Almost all of it. I don’t need to overlap with what museums, art galleries and science centres already do well, and I hope to serve a need for what’s currently lacking in the public realm.
1) Spaces that encourage you to pause, to rest, to think, to just Be.
2) Spaces that celebrate the togetherness and creativity of ‘not knowing’.
So I am unlikely to have a permanent collection of objects, or be all in one place. So many places show you the finished objects, the results of the experiment, the discovery made years ago. I want to be somewhere that is where the unfinished ideas live. Where you can encounter ideas in motion rather than static inside glass cases. I don’t want to be the institution holding all the power, knowledge and objects, and inviting you in to learn from my stuff. That sets us up out of balance from the start. I want to meet you in the place of ‘not knowing’ - and learn from the way you ask questions and explore things. I trust you.
What does an Imaginary Museum think about?
Lunch.
What it would be like to be the first museum in space.
I dream about places with interesting, maybe even beautiful things you can rest your mind on if you want to, but where nothing is required of you. Where you can let your brain and soul float a little.
Maybe that’s a church or a temple, but not everyone is religious. Maybe it’s a train station bench when you’re not actually catching a train, or the wall at the end of the road that looks out over the city. It’s definitely the park, but it’s not always warm and dry….. I’m thinking out loud now.
