Towards an Inclusive Museology in Material Culture Museums: Conceptual Art as a Method

This volume explores contemporary artistic practices developed in material culture museums to reimagine historic collections. It begins by examining the influence of conceptual art within art museums and the transformative impact it has had on museology. Specifically, it highlights how conceptual art's institutional critique, initially rooted in the art world, has been adopted and adapted by other areas of museology.

The contributions collected in this volume span various timelines: they consider historic conceptualism and its influence in the art or ethnographic museum; recent North-South/East-West decolonial practices, with a focus on practices developed on the African continent; post-digital conceptual practices that are problematising heritage and locality; and performative and activist conceptual practices. At the same time, some of the contributions gathered in this volume express a timely critique of artistic interventions in museums, which turn out to be formal solutions that maintain a hegemonic vision on history.

The chapters examine conceptual art in the development of new solutions for socially engaged and decolonising museological practices. The first part considers artistic actions conceived as a response to the history of art and the art institution and explores their intended repercussions in social space and other branches of museology. The second part shifts the perspective from the art museum to ethnology, history, and natural history museums. The final part explores an emerging vision of the museum as a socially and ecologically just, virtual, or concrete space of action and discourse, advocating its affinity with recent innovative trans-disciplinary, post-conceptual, and performative art practices.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in contemporary art and practice, art history, museum studies, and heritage studies.