ABSTRACT
Rethinking of the forms and practices of the ‘public sphere’ are especially relevant, as museums are framed as important locations in the public sphere. The debates on the nature of the public sphere generated by Jurgen Habermas’ foundational text contribute to theorizing the ‘public’ nature of museums and their communications. Most museums think of the word public as the public, or those people outside who may visit a museum. The idea of publicness being the creation and sharing of goods in common is invoked in another sense, that of Public seen as pertaining to the state or governments. Publicness has also come to mean the extent an organization is influenced by political authority, with ‘privateness’ constituted more positively as free from governmental authority. Both visibility and openness are important public qualities for museums. But openness has been generally discussed more in terms of ‘available to all’, than as a political characteristic defining democratic practice.
