ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that museum is in ethical and sustainable relationship work, which takes time, commitment and sustained effort, that 'touch' comes into its own. Drawing on psychoanalysis, the importance of 'active' viewing and sensory experiencing of the ambiguous 'amenable object' in the museum is emphasized as a way of powerfully communicating between people from very different worlds. Melanie Klein made 'object-relations' central to the working through of emotional alienation and anxiety key issues when working with diaspora communities in this country. Ever since the refugee women left, the Manchester Museum has been working to make direct contact with objects through touch as central to its developing 'ways of working', and it has involved more than a few questions about our practices, prohibitions, prejudices about ourselves. It is life as culture, as society, as the beginning of understanding, and in its symbolism and actuality, it begins the process of developing an ethical relationship with others.
