ABSTRACT
This chapter explores more dialogic and democratic possibilities for the museum in public. Inspected is interacting with ‘the public’, a key component of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) new vision of the agora. Theories of ‘interacting’ rely on the differences between two perspectives of human communication: those of a transmissive nature, and those that are ritual in character. Interacting is perceived both in terms of face-to-face relations among people, and first-hand relations with material objects. Interactivity is also interpreted as something people do with media such as computers, where an emphasis on control and manipulation of the ‘interactives’ or gadgets, more than creative or emergent learning, sometimes results. The experiences and relationships of the volunteer corps during Renaissance ROM could serve as an instructive model of the kind of interacting the museum might want with people in the outside world.
