Museums as Third Spaces for Intercultural Dialogue. Guest post by Juana Du and Mingshi Cui.
There has been an increasing awareness in recent years regarding the indispensable role that museums can play in encouraging intercultural dialogues and enhancing social inclusiveness. The imaginary cultural space of the museum has propelled us to a realization that we are in an era where interculturality, transculturalism, and the eventual prospect of identifying cosmopolitan citizenship can become a reality. Researchers have been examining the museum-based pedagogy of transculturalism, viewing museums as a third space where visitors from different backgrounds could learn more about other cultures and how different cultures collide and interact with each other throughout history. Yet, there has not been much study on how the visitors navigate the museum collections on display by engaging in intercultural learning activities in a way that encourages self-reflection on cultural identities and enhances a sense of global citizenship. Thus, our research investigates the potentiality of museums to be transformed into third spaces where visitors may actively explore a complex multitude of identities and cosmopolitan citizenship.
This research offers several practical implications for both museum administrators and intercultural educators. First, it suggests that museum educators design interactive exhibitions creatively to encourage transferring exhibitions into a third space in order to facilitate intercultural dialogues. Second, this research suggests museum administrators can improve their services to a more diverse group of audiences so as to enhance the inclusiveness of museum exhibitions. Finally, we suggest that cultural sites such as museums and other cultural institutions or sites may find ways to incorporate diverse methods and transform themselves into a third space that provides a more favorable cultural context for learning and transcultural communication.
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Her research interests include material culture studies, intercultural communication, and digital humanities. Drawing upon her previous educational and working experiences, she is particularly interested in examining how to facilitate cross-cultural understanding in museums, so that audiences and the museum professionals alike could better engage with the museum collections and empathize with their originating communities that had experienced histories of disempowerments.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 