ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how and why museums and galleries might need to engage in a process of reconciliation with their publics and what the literature of reconciliation studies offers to facilitate mutual understanding. It explains how the museological process of reconciliation is, at heart, an ethical project. The chapter looks at a range of theories of and approaches to institutional critique and socially engaged practice through a framework of museum ethics and links a changing museum to a changing history of artistic interventions. Institutional critique, the systematic inquiry into institutional structure, policy and practice, is widely recognised as a key strategy of engagement for artists since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Museums and galleries are commonly motivated to commission projects of institutional critique as a means towards self-reflective practice and evidencing a progressive sensibility. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
