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the new museum commmunity
272 • the ignorant museum
The Ignorant Museum:
Transforming the Elitist Museum
Into an Inclusive Learning Place
yuha jung
Pennsylvania State University
audiences, challenges, benefits
yuha jung • 273
Museums have historically functioned as places for collecting,
preserving, researching, and exhibiting signicant objects
related to human and natural histories, traditions, arts, and
knowledge. While today’s museums are taking on a greater
educational role, the histor ical depositor y function can
still be felt in museum practice. For example, the mission
of many art and historical museums remains to expand,
preserve, and exhibit their collections. While this kind of
mission can be one of the most fundamental functions of
museums, when art museums focus too much attention on
their objects’ aesthetic or historical signicance, they risk
neglecting their role as educational institutions. Instead of
inviting visitors to engage in meaning-making, the objects
are presented as if they have a single monolithic signicance.
As a result, only those people who have access to and interest
in the objects’ aesthetic, historical, and cultural signicance
feel comfortable valuing and relating to them. If the museum
does not encourage visitors to engage with those objects in
their own ways and to consider their relevance to their own
memories, history, and knowledge, the museum becomes a
mere depository that benets only a few people. In such a case,
as expressed in Paulo Freire’s book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
the museum becomes an oppressor as it imposes its raried
beliefs and knowledge upon its visitors and shuts many out
from deeper participation. In the next section, I expand on
this idea of the museum as oppressor by analyzing Freire’s
theory in the context of the museum setting.
Freire argues that the world’s people are divided into two
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274 • the ignorant museum
groups – the oppressed and the oppressors. According to Freire,
the oppressed are controlled by the oppressors and therefore,
are unab le to f ul ly exe rcis e the ir age ncy.1 Bec ause t he op press ors
care only about gaining control over others, they create a false
reality in which injustice, exploitation, and violence are used
to gain power over the oppressed.2 Frei re’s oppressed-oppressor
binary constitutes a metaphor for what happens in many
museum practices. In the traditionally assumed museum-
visitor relationship, the voice of the museum dominates over
those of its visitors. The museum guides visitors as to what
to see, what to read, and where to go next. Visitors are treated
as passive recipients of knowledge as opposed to learning
agents. As a result, both the museum and visitors become
depositories: the museum is understood as a depository of
history, knowledge, and art, and visitors as depositories of what
the museum has contained, collected, and imposed.
Many museum practices embody this oppressed-oppressor
binary with respect to the museum-visitor relationship
and relationships among museum professionals. Visitors,
who cannot find their interests and epistemological ways
reected in the museum’s exhibitions, programs, lectures,
or other events, can feel marg inal ized from mu seu m
culture. The museum, then, is not experienced as a place
for relevant learning but as a warehouse of irrelevant and
meaningless objects. Visitors with this kind of experience
are un likely to return. Sim ilarly, there is a hierarchical
relationship among museum professionals in which power
is unequal ly distributed. While directors and curators are
audiences, challenges, benefits
yuha jung • 275
considered object experts and are imbued with the power to
choose exhibition themes, objects, and art works, other staff
mem bers, i nclud ing educat ors, are often exc luded f rom majo r
decision-making processes.
I recently had a chance to discuss this issue with a local
museum educator. According to the educator, cu rators in
her museum who are experts in different genres (such as
Renaissance art, contemporary art, and Western painting)
work in dep end ent ly in develo pin g, re sea rch ing, and
planning exhibitions. Part of the educator’s work is to create
accompanying programs afterwards. In such cases, each
curator’s work offers a single viewpoint, failing to ref lect
collaboration and diverse perspectives. As long as museums
function like the oppressed-oppressor relationship, their
practices will not be able to change in an inclusive and
democratic way.
The pedagogy of the oppressed
According to Freire, in order to obtain agency, people must
identify old ideologies and their causes and transform an old
world into a new situation.3 Freire introduces the pedagogy
of the oppressed as an ideal approach to transform the old
world into a more humane and just society. The pedagogy of
the oppressed is a pedagogy of humankind which is generous,
authentic, and humanistic and, importantly, developed
by the oppressed themselves.4 Through the pedagogy of
the oppressed, the oppressed can be empowered to think
critically about their oppressors and about the role they
the new museum commmunity
276 • the ignorant museum
play in their own subjugation. In order to change their lot
in life, the oppressed must understand reality not as a xed
world but rather as a limiting situation which is capable of
transformation.5
Ca n museu ms’ ol d ideolo gie s and thei r causes be
chal lenged and transfor med through a pedagogy of the
oppressed? What a re the oppressive ideologies and their
causes in museum culture? Traditional museum practice
and development are certainly implicated. David Fleming
argues that museums have excluded socio-economically less
fortunate groups of people “not by accident but by design.” 6
In part to ensure their financial viability, museums have
restricted themselves to meeting the needs and interests of
educated, middle-class, economically powerful people. Also,
the fact that museums have been run by an elitist minority
has affected what they have collected, how they have been
managed, and for whom they have tailored their programs.7
Fleming especially criticizes the role of curator-directors in
museum practices for not prioritizing inclusive museum
practices since they have personal ly benefited from their
social status and power within the hierarchical organization.8
In addition, Fleming points out that these professionals tend
to focus on the “pursuit of academic excellence” at the expense
of commu nicating effectively wit h lay aud iences .9 As a result,
they neglect community education and social inclusion. This
traditional de velopment of museums can st ill be felt in many
museums today. The authoritative Euro-centric discourse and
elitist notion that museums are for the culturally “rened”
audiences, challenges, benefits
yuha jung • 277
remain unspoken but also unchallenged among many in the
museum world.
In order to transform this historically-inuenced museum
discourse into one which is more inclusive, I will further
explore the notion of a flex ible, mutable world through
drawing on more speci fic ideas from Freire and Jacques
Rancière’s book, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in
Intellectual Emancipation. I will do this through comparing
museum practices to school education.
Naming the museum
According to Freire, the narrative of the pedagogy of the
oppressor is t hat students are empty objects who must listen
to what their teachers say. In this form of education, students
are seen as containers or receptacles which can be lled up by
teachers.10 Freire uses the banking system as a metaphor to
describe this view that academic knowledge is deposited into
students’ m inds .11 However, in the pedagogy of the oppressed,
this system of unidirectional transfer of knowledge becomes
multidirectional. In its place, a system of mutual exchange
between teachers and students is created.12 Students think
critical ly about the educational materials and content and
pro vide constructive critique and diverse perspectives
to constantly impro ve their educationa l environment.
Likewise, teachers strive to understand what their students
want and to engage them in critical thinking. The result is
a horizontal relationship in which teachers act as partners
with students in devising curricula through problem-posing
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278 • the ignorant museum
communication.13 As the vertical characteristics of banking
education are broken down, students are liberated from their
former role as submissive depositories of knowledge.14
Similarly, i n an oppre ssive muse um, vi sit ors are
considered as containers or receptacles while curators are
charged with depositing information and knowledge which
may or may not be relevant to them. However, when problem-
posing education is exercised, visitors can act as teachers
and museum staff can act as students. They all can learn
from and teach each other. Through mutual relationship,
humanization, and critical thi nking, v isitors can digest
museum offerings not as authoritative truths but rather as
something to be changed and interpreted differently, based
on their own personal histories, memories, knowledge, and
experience. A vertical relationship between museums and
visitors ceases to exist when visitors are acknowledged as
learning agent s and com municative bei ngs and when real ity
is recognized as mutable and therefore, transformable.
One important aspect of the pedagogy of the oppressed is
the notion of praxis, which consists of action and reection.
Without action, word s become mere empty vesse ls of
reection.15 In order to transform the world, action is essential.
However, action and reection must be balanced. If one is
stressed more than the other, the result is either activism or
verbalism, both of which create an unhelpful dichotomy in
the world.16 According to Freire, human beings are not born to
be silent but to work in “action-reection”.17 In order to c hange
the world and live in the praxis of action-reection according
audiences, challenges, benefits
yuha jung • 279
to their own agency, people must name the world and then
rename and new-name it to alleviate problems.18
“Naming” is a process of recognizing one’s own situation in
relation to other people, society, and larger systems and being
critical and reective about the recognition. Once problems are
identied, recognized, and reected, the process of renaming
and new-naming follows, the process to nd solutions and
create new situations. However, naming, renaming, and new-
naming should not be a one-time practice. Rather, the cycle
must continue in order for more positive transformation to
take place because things always change and new situations
and solutions become obsolete and irrelevant. Here, dialogue
comes into play.
Dialogue involves not only a simple exchange of ideas, but
rather, a process of creation and re-creation based on love for
the world and its people.19 According to Freire, dialogue builds
mutual trust and horizontal relationships that bring people
who are involved with the dialogue into closer partnership as
they name the world together.20
It is my hope that the current pedagogy of museums can
be transformed and changed into a visitor- and education-
oriented pedagogy through this praxis of reection, action,
naming, and renaming based on dialogue, love, mutual
trust, and horizontal partnership. Museum professionals
and administrators shou ld embrace the notion th at t he
reality of museum practices is not xed but rather mutable
an d tran sformabl e. They mu st cha llen ge the current
pedagogy of museums through collaboration, dialogue, and
the new museum commmunity
280 • the ignorant museum
communication among themselves and with their visitors.
By developing mutual, commun icative, and hor izontal
relationships and exercising the pedagogy of the oppressed,
museums can develop their pedagogy in ways that are relevant
to visitors’ points of view. The content of their educational
prog rams and exhibitions can be renewed and recreated
constantly. In this renamed museum pedagogy, museum
professionals can act as faci litators who understand that
reality is transformable and recognize problematic issues
rather than overlooking them. They have the opportunity to
invent new ways of empowering their visitors to learn in a
personal and communicative way.
Emancipating museum education
Another approach t hat c an c ha nge museum s i nt o
communicative, welcoming learning places is the approach
Rancière lays out in his book, The Ignorant Schoolmaster.
Rancière tells the story of a French professor, Joseph Jacotot,
who was exiled to Belgium in 1818 and offered a teaching
position at the University of Louvain.21 Although he did
not speak Flemish and his students did not speak French,
Jacotot discovered that his students actually learned French
indirectly through a collaborative effort to understand a class
textbook written in French.22 According to Rancière, Jacotot
did not give his students any explicit explanations about
French grammar, spelling, or conjugations.23 Rather, his
students relied on the book, its translation, and their desire
to learn French, just as children learn their mother tongues
audiences, challenges, benefits
yuha jung • 281
through observing, repeating, failing, trying, and verifying.24
Instead of using an established pedagogical method, Jacotot
relied on his students’ will to learn.
Rancière uses this story to argue that the traditional
emph asi s on explicatio n from sc hool maste rs, which
generates a dichotomy between masters and students – the
knowing and the ignorant, the capable and the incapable –
creates a n intellectual hie rarchy.25 Traditional school masters
are at the top of the intellectual hierarchy. They impose their
knowledge on their students whom they consider to be empty
vessels while missing out on the educational benefits of a
more communicative, horizontal approach. These school
masters fail to understand that students actually learn best
through experiences, chances, failures, and self-corrections.
According to Rancière, explanatory education involves the
notion that one knows better than the other who can not
understand without help from the master.26 This division
of superior and inferior intelligence actual ly leads people
toward “stultication”.27
Ran cière’s crit ici sm of s choo l mast ers a nd the ir
“explanatory” way of teaching has much in common with
Freire’s critique of bank ing system education. In both
perspectives, a binary division of teachers and students is
challenged and the view of students as empt y containers
or depositories of imposed knowledge is rejected. Both
approaches place students instead at the center of learning
processes and empower them to act as learning agents. In
addition, they both emphasize the importance of reection,
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282 • the ignorant museum
action, critical thinking, and the wil l to tra nsform the
old ideologies of unidirectional, oppressive, hierarchical
education into learner-based, multidirectional, mutual, and
democratic education.
Institutionalized museums have also been criticized for
their dichotomy of superior and inferior intelligence through
the imposition of an explanatory voice. For example, many art
museums write their exhibition labels based on art historical
knowledge without considering their audiences. As a result,
the labels often contain jargon and difcult terminology that
are unfamiliar to people who do not have an art historical
bac kgrou nd. I have o ften felt f rus trat ed whe n I ha ve come acros s
museum labels that I cannot understand without a dictionary
and supplemental background knowledge. While I am certain
that this is partly because my mother tongue is not English,
the term s are often u nclea r and d ifc ult to n ative s peakers, to o,
especially children. Museums limit their potential audiences
by trying to teach or impose certain knowledge which creates
an intellectual hierarchy between them and their audiences.
This kind of museum practice also diminishes visitors’ desire
to learn and experience in museums.
According to Rancière, a method of equality is a method
of the wil l.28 People can learn anything without an explication
from masters when they are motivated. A pure relationship
should be established between teachers and students based
on free will and on the liberation of intelligence.29 Through
his experiment, Jacotot discovered that one could even teach
a foreign language when his or her students are emancipated.
audiences, challenges, benefits
yuha jung • 283
Students need to feel that they are not at the bottom of the
intellect ual h ierarchy but rat her that they a re lear ning agent s,
capable of using their own intelligence in stimulating ways. In
order to be emancipated, people need to understand the true
power of the human mind and believe that they can learn by
themselves.30 To achieve emancipation in museums, museum
professionals must understand that they are not the only ones
who d istr ibute and create kno wledge but th at thei r audiences
have their own intelligence and abilities to create their own
knowledge. While museum professionals do have a role in
conveying specialized knowledge, they must also prepare a
learning environment where visitors are invited to interpret
that knowledge in ways that are relevant to their lives. They
also should understand that there is not only one way of
learning but that people have various ways of learning through
observing, repeating, failing, trying, and correcting.
The visitors, in turn, bear a responsibility to make sure
that their voices are heard and their needs are reflected
and to challenge, when appropriate, what is presented to
them in museum exhibitions, events, and programs. They
should understand that their relationships with museum
professionals and institution s are mutua l, horizonta l,
and flexible and that they are capable of interacting and
col laborat ing to improve the museum envi ronment. In
addition, they should seize opportunities to personalize the
public knowledge available in museums instead of simply
accepting any historical or aesthetic signicance captured
on labels. They will benet from embracing the notion that
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284 • the ignorant museum
they are at the center of their own meaning-making processes
and that whatever they make sense of from what they see,
hear, read, and feel in museums is of value.
Ecological museum pedagogy
In order to incorporate the two theories, the pedagogy of
the oppressed and the emancipatory education of Freire and
Rancière, in museum practices, I suggest the adoption of
an ecological mind-set among museum professionals and
audiences as a way to reduce the authoritative, elite, and
object-based quality of museums. An ecological approach
involves seeing the world with an holistic view and treating
individuals not as basic social units but, rather, as part of
the natural world. Nature must be regarded not as an object
or raw material to be used up for people’s own gain, but as a
system of interconnected and interdependent ecosystems that
allow biodiversity, including the existence of humankind.31
This perspective contrasts sharply with the histor ically
dominant Eu rocentric mind-set in the cu rrent education
system, which embraces a human/natu re dichotomy and
an anthropocentric v iew of community as a collection of
autonomous individuals.32 The ecological mind-set prevents
such modernistic dichotomous and contradictory ideas that
the world’s people are divided based on their social condition,
race, gender, cultural background, sexual orientation, or
educational level. Rather, it holds that everyone is equally
valuable, intelligent, capable, and worthy of respect.
This ecological approach shares characteristics of the
audiences, challenges, benefits
yuha jung • 285
pedagog y of the oppressed and emancipatory education.
For example, the ecological point of view understands the
importance of horizontal relationships among creatures,
people, and cultures, which are essential for the survival of
ecosystems and all living organisms on the earth. Therefore,
the metaphor of ecology is applied for school and museum
education. When an ecological mind-set is exercised in
museum pedagogy and practices, museum professionals can
understand that they and their visitors are interconnected
and interdependent and therefore, they cannot sustain
their practices if they ignore the private knowledge of their
visitors and the differences among them. Through ecological
mus eum pedagogy, the old pedagogy c an be n amed, renamed,
and ne w-named through col laboration, dialog ue, and
com munication among museum professionals and with
their visitors. Ecologically-minded museum workers wil l
think critically about their own practices, identify current
problems, and create a new museum cu lture and practices
that can be challenged again through a repetitive process
of naming, renam ing, and new-naming. In other words,
museum professionals must evaluate and revise their current
pedagogy and practices continual ly and collaborate w ith
each other and other museums, cultural and educational
institutions in order to transform the current situation into
a more inclusive, democratic learning environment. They
shou ld converse with each other to exchange, create, and
renew ideas through meeting on a regular basis.
However, muse ums and their profes sion als can not
the new museum commmunity
286 • the ignorant museum
perform this ecological transformation without consulting
and communicating with their audiences, museums’ most
important constituencies. Through thorough visitor studies,
such as visitor surveys, casual conversations, and in/formal
interviews, both counterparts should exchange and share
what they feel and want in museum practices based on
horizontal relationships. As a result, they will constantly
communicate and collaborate with each other and build a
solid community based on trust and love.
Another solution to transform museum s into more
inclusive, democratic, and education-based learning places
and to encour age dialogue, com municat ion, an d coll aborat ion
among museum professionals and visitors is to neutralize
museums’ hierarch ical staff organization. One way to
di ssolve t his i nstit ution aliz ed notion of education a nd vert ical
relationships is to abandon the notion of experts through the
process of “de-professionalization”. De-professionalization
involves removing power relationships.33 For example, doctors
shou ld be seen not as e xper ts of med icine and c ure, but rather
as people who can share knowledge and apply skills to help
other people become healthier. Likewise, museum curators
and directors should be understood not as art experts but
as educators whose role is to expand and enhance visitors’
learning experiences. In this atmosphere, museum visitors
wi ll feel more comfor table, we lcomed, and respected, and, a s a
result, they are more likely to participate in museum programs
and provide feedback to improve their museum community.
Lastly, I would like to urge both museum professionals and
audiences, challenges, benefits
yuha jung • 287
visitors to understand museums not as mere depositories of
art, history, and knowledge, but genui ne, effective, enjoyable
learning places. Fostering an ecological mind-set among
museum professionals and their constituencies will help
museums become places where interactive dialogue takes
place, a horizontal point of view is involved and valued, and
everyone is made to feel welcome and respected.
the new museum commmunity
288 • the ignorant museum
References
Bowers, C. A. Cultural Diversity and the Ecological Crisis. In
Critical Essays on Education, Modernity, and the Recovery of
the Ecological Imperative, 163-178. New York: Teachers College
Press, 1993.
Prakash, Madhu Suri. and Esteva, Gustavo. Escaping Education:
Living as Learning within Grassroots Cultures. New York: Peter
Lang, 2008.
Fleming, David. Positioning the Museum for Social Inclusion.
In Muse ums, Soc iety, In equalit y, edited by Richard Sandell,
213-224. London: New York: Routledge, 2002.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum,
1993.
Orr, David W. Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to
a Postmodern World. Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1992.
Rancière, Jacques. The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in
Intellectual Emancipation. California: Stanford University
Press, 1991.
audiences, challenges, benefits
yuha jung • 289
Notes
1 Paulo Fre ire, Pedagogy of t he Oppressed ( New York: Continuu m, 1993), 25-27.
2 Ibid., 25-27.
3 Ibid., 29.
4 Ibid., 35-36.
5 Ibid., 31.
6 Dav id Fle min g, “Pos itio nin g the Mu seu m for So cia l Inc lusi on,” in M useu ms, S ocie ty,
Inequ ality, ed. Rich ard Sandel l (London: Ne w York: Rout ledge, 2002), 213.
7 Ibid., 213-219.
8 Ibid., 213-214.
9 Ibid., 214 .
10 Paulo Fre ire, Pedagogy of t he Oppressed ( New York: Continuu m, 1993), 52-53.
11 Ibid., 53-54.
12 Ibid., 61-62.
13 Ibid., 60-62
14 Ibid., 60-62.
15 Ibid., 68-69.
16 Ibid., 68-69.
17 Ibid., 69.
18 Ibid., 69-71.
19 Ibid., 69-73.
20 Ibid., 69-73.
21 Jac que s R anc ière , T he Igno ran t S choo lma ste r: Fiv e L ess ons in In tel lec tua l
Emanc ipation (Cal ifornia : Stanford Uni versity Press , 1991), 1.
22 Ibid., 1-4.
23 Ibid., 3.
24 Ibid., 9-10.
25 Ibid., 5-7.
the new museum commmunity
290 • the ignorant museum
26 Ibid., 6.
27 Ibid., 8.
28 Ibid., 12.
29 Ibid., 13.
30 Ibid., 15.
31 Dav id W. Orr, Eco logical Literacy : Educati on and th e Trans ition to a Postmode rn
World (Alban y: State Universit y of New York Press, 1992), 92-95.
32 C. A. Bowers, “Cultu ral Diver sity and the Ecol ogical C risis,” i n Critica l Essays on
Edu cation , Mod ernit y, and the Recove ry o f the Ecolo gical Impe rative (New York:
Teachers Col lege Press, 1993), 164, 170-171 .
33 Mad hu Suri Pra kash and Cu stavo Este va, Escapin g Education : Living as Learn ing
with in Grassroot s Cultures ( New York: Peter Lang, 2 008), 120.