ABSTRACT
The concept of agonism is a useful framework by which to grapple with the gestures of reconciliation that critical practice enacts between museums and publics. The discursive space creates sustained conditions for enactments of reconciliation between museums and their publics. Former Hammer Curatorial Associate Elizabeth Cline refers to the Artists Council as a kind of ‘institutional critique’ and credits the group with introducing key museum innovations towards reconciliation such as its department of public engagement. The educational turn is often a productive strategy for discursive museums to work towards reconciliation with their publics; it encourages curators and curatorial departments to assume responsibility for generating productive conflict and for working relationally – towards dissolving boundaries between self and other – in a domain which has long claimed privilege and authority. Creating the conditions for reconciliation, even for the most committed and risk-taking discursive museums, is a complex and ongoing process.
