ABSTRACT
Royal Ontario Museum security guards patrolled the boundary between the protesters and the museum, keeping a pathway clear for visitors going in and out of the building. The Royal Ontario Museum was a ‘public’ institution, serving the public trust, and supported in part by allocations of provincial government monies of almost $28 million Cdn a year at the time of the research in 2009. Publicness and the public sphere have been a focus of attention for political, communication, social, and cultural studies theorists. A Museum in Public is uniquely situated within the Canadian cultural policy and museum production context, offering an original commentary on capitalism and managerialism within public culture in Canada, as well as contributing to museum theory and practice internationally. Public access to detailed information, especially documentation, and access to people for interviews was difficult, or very slow. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
