The Ideal Museum: Art and the Audience of Museums, Real and Imagined

Abstract

The aim of this project is to examine the impulse to create community gathering space within the museum. This work has been undertaken by museum staff who are aware of the museum's various points of inaccessibility, though continue to struggle with ways to engage historically excluded publics. I find that three main factors inhibit this type of community gathering: the hierarchical structure of the museum profession, the spatial politics and layout of museum, and the location of art museums. I then synthesize my findings, proposing a new mode of institutional collaboration to ground a community-based practice that promotes the broadest public access to the arts.