ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the processes and components, value systems and organisational structures that need to be in place for the practitioner researcher to thrive. Research becomes less exclusively aligned with authorial explanation and the specialist researcher and more centred on the investigation of ideas by museum professionals, community members, university colleagues and those visiting. Achim Borchardt-Hume image of research as a household pet that is familiar, at times unruly, but essentially a benign presence in everyone’s lives sums up in many ways what is needed for the art museum to become research-led. The framework assumes that not only academics, but community members, young people and teachers, for example, working on programmes with the museum as well as more informal visitors, can be located as researchers. The research environment is one where art museum practitioner researchers are supported to question, explore, analyse and create new insights, within an overarching process of ongoing learning.
