ABSTRACT
The museum’s status and authority depends on the acquisition and care of systematically classified and constituted objects. The discourse of financial sustainability, which is concerned with maintaining the solvency of the museum, does not necessarily privilege collections-based research to the same degree, but rather foregrounds activities that more directly generate income. The discourse of academia revealed itself through interviewees’ framing of research and knowledge itself in the museum, which in turn was influenced by the context in which they worked. The seeming elitism of the academic discourse, alongside the introversion of the discourse of collection care, comes under scrutiny within the discourse of democratic participation. Frances Morris acknowledged that increasingly curators need to accommodate the interests of the audience and the specificity of the museum’s unique context. Gaining clarity on what constitutes research in the art museum involves establishing generally accepted criteria premised on its characteristics rather than its outputs and avoiding the privileging of individual disciplines.
