Beyond Bricks and Mortar: reframing museum encounters

Since the late 1970s museums have undergone a significant shift paradigm shift in relation to how they view their overall mission. This shift can be characterised as a turning away from traditional models in which individual curators (by way of scholarship and connoisseurship) dictate how museum audiences should apprehend and understand significant objects of art, science and history towards a community-centred approach where curators work collaboratively with interested stakeholders to create a pluralist platform for social change. Robinson (2017) puts some of these ideas under the microscope as part of her recent review of the exhibition Encounters: Revealing Stories of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Objects from the British Museum.