This study explores the possibilities of, and questions whom museums are for within posthuman contemporary museological practices. The understood applied context of posthumanist dialogues within this study specifically hones into a primary focus of object-oriented ontology.
This is an understanding of equality between the existences of human and nonhuman entities. Museum spaces and museum objects will be used as points of departure, by which to challenge the anthropocentric view that museums are for humans only. Notions of both the museum space and museum object form and signify two concrete strands of museology. Therefore examples of nonhuman actors within museums will be drawn from their intra-actions with both spaces and objects, to analyse and explore question of who museums are for. In order to explore these nonhuman entities, illustrative examples will be drawn from ‘contemporary’ practice; this includes recent practices within the past few years, but spanning no further than the last decade of museology. When considering whom museums are for within the context of posthumanist theory and ideas, it is worth clarifying that this study does not try to analyse or comment on this philosophy, but instead applies this approach to museological practice. The field of posthumanism is expansive and growing and has been applied to museology on few occasions. Therefore to retain a tighter focus, the question of ‘who museums are for?’ lends itself to object-oriented ontology which serves to contest anthropocentric thinking. Therefore this exploration challenges that museums are for humans only.
Few literature examples dissect intersections between contemporary museology practices and object-oriented ontological posthumanist discourse. Key posthumanist scholars influencing this field are Stefan Herbrechter, Timothy Morton and Donna Haraway; who explore these philosophical concerns that can be applied to museology. Herbrechter asserts critical posthumanism emerges out of, but also sits alongside poststructuralism in order to account for contemporary turns and new materiality. Herbrechter explains this through ‘the fragmentation and pluralization of the human principle (as a result of the dissolution of traditional boundaries between human and animal, or between superhuman, subhuman and inhuman) energizes a critical rereading of humanist reading.’ The consideration of new materiality is one of the key drivers of object-oriented ontology. Along this line, Morton advocates humans should make absolute and dramatic alterations in re-considering relationships with nonhuman actors and ecologies. Furthermore his notion of ‘Hyperobjects’, has reconsidered how certain objects are untied to specific spatial and temporal moments, in being so fluid and dispersed. This term of reference is useful when considering whom the museum is for through expansions of museum spaces.
Utilising research within an object-oriented ontology avoids considering the posthuman as literally ‘post¬–’ human; in simply reducing this field to transhumanism; progression of human species to technological and digital entities. Hayles’ assertion of posthumanism is that information is prioritised over materiality. This essay averts this understanding because posthumanism dialogues have changed since these earlier first-wave contributions to the field; which also opposes this study’s object-oriented ontology.
Whereas museologists with leanings towards posthumanism include Arndís Bergsdóttir, whose analytic case study critiqued the ‘Bundled up in Blue’ exhibition at The National Museum of Iceland. Bergsdóttir’s comprehensive text contributes to the cyborgian and feminist posthumanism field, influenced by Donna Haraway, however this case study feels more relevant to contemporary discourse because of its treatment of materiality. Furthermore, literature by Sandra Dudley and Elaine Gurian implicitly suggest notions of posthuman museological practices. Gurian advocates for the importance of congregant spaces to overcome ‘Threshold Fear’ for humans accessing museums. However, using the means of a structured toolkit arguably limits the scope to explore and question further possibilities for museums as congregant spaces. This is something which artist Hito Steryl expands on, by calling for museums to be treated as cities, thus expanding how we consider who museums are for. Dudley asserts the need for a return to object-led materiality, in that humans benefit from sensory and emotive responses to objects. Dudley critiqued Eileen Hooper-Greenhill for not placing enough importance on materiality. Consequently reconsidered by Hooper-Greenhill within ‘Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture’, in moving from earlier ideas of museums as spaces for learning, to a more object–centric stance.
Journalism and articles provided useful examples for this study in widening the scope of illustrations; to appropriately edit and select from to address how contemporary museological practice explores key arguments. Despite being grey matter, journalistic facts are easily affirmed by cross-referencing sources; be that museum, exhibition, or collection records. Furthermore symposium recordings, such as the ‘Avant Museology’ series are stimulating to understand posthumanist practices through multi-perspectival discussion to understand various current avenues of thought. As well as scrutinizing secondary sources, undertaking personal fieldwork and site visits to exhibitions, alongside corresponding with a contemporary artist; have all contributed to this exploration into whom the museum is for. From direct experience and analysis of multiple sources, this study employs a multi-perspectival approach in synthesizing and critiquing theoretical and primary experiences to challenge that museums and galleries are solely for humans within the context of a non-human centric ideology.
Contemporary museum spaces range from digital and intangible spaces, touring and temporary pop-up spaces, but also the pervading and pre-existing neo-classical, modernist, postmodern and deconstructivist spaces, which all operate within the context of contemporary practice. Through an exploration into physical and then digital spaces; expectations and understandings of who museums are for can be interrogated.
The closest examples of how physical museum spaces intersect contemporary posthumanist practices lie within the realms of postmodern and deconstructivist spaces. Typically postmodern museum spaces consider how architecture can respond to collections, but also act as tools and drivers for urban renewal in considering a wider ecology surrounding the museum – termed the ‘Bilbao Effect’ following construction of the Guggenheim. Deconstructivist spaces embrace non-recto linear spaces disrupted by architectural elements and pioneer definitive exteriors that manipulate structural surfaces and materials. The Imperial War Museum North (IWMN) [Appendix A] illustrates deconstructivist spaces, both inside and out. These spaces house objects of war, but also serve a wider civic function, in how its impressive monumental architecture attracts tourists. By applying Michaela Giebelhausen’s concept of the museum as a monument and museum as instrument to contemporary museum spaces, it becomes apparent ‘the rise of postmodernity has blurred the boundaries of these two distinct modalities.’ This hybridization of these once clear distinctions can be suggested as a symptom of posthumanist and facilitate humans and nonhumans operating within these spaces – evident through the following illustrative example of experiencing the Imperial War Museum North first hand.
This fractured aluminum-clad homage to war, lies on the former site of Trafford Park’s munitions factories used for both World Wars; this site suffered extensive damage during the Manchester Blitz. Architect Daniel Libeskind’s concept of a globe is shattered into three pieces; the EarthShard, WaterShard and AirShard proudly claim Manchester’s Salford Quays as a monument. Its interior spaces instigate sensory and emotional responses for humans; in being disorienting by altering angles, perspectives the temperatures. The AirShard represents a ravaged and vacuous husk-like shell, which is neither an outdoor nor indoor space; while offering some shelter, it is also exposed to the elements. This architecture harnesses the weather to facilitate a sensory museum experience. The weather and wind contributes to this space as nonhuman actors, in dancing and swooping to fill this monumental shard, creating an audio and haptic experience. Beside human audiences, these nonhuman participants also have agency over the AirShard. Human audiences complete their humbling IWMN visit with this experience; a stark and visceral reminder of the harsh cold that comes with grief and the powerlessness of the individual without agency within the context of war. Therefore this experience indicates that spaces within Imperial War Museum North are not only vessels for understanding war, in standing as an instrument and monument, but as a hybrid by engaging human audiences with human participants, therefore challenging who museums may be for within posthumanist museum practices.
Therefore museum spaces could be considered objects within their own right, in that it is used as a standalone vehicle to access collections by creating specific experiences for human and nonhuman actors. Arguably this museum space goes further than existing within a single spatial and temporal moment. IWMN does this insofar as, like an object, the physical museum structure and what it symbolises, combined with its geographical context; speaks to histories and millennia of conflicts. The Imperial War Museum North’s spaces not only utter past and current experiences of war, but the removed ‘war shapes lives’ narrative leaps into the future by framing war as a perpetuating, cyclical and affective transcending body. This space can be considered holistically, in that it is always reacting to and presenting manifestations of war, which is an entity that transcends space and time, in not belonging to one particular moment. Therefore this fluid quality of the museum space responding to its collections can be contextualised by posthumanist philosopher Morton, who would consider war as a hyperobject. How a hyperobject can be applied to the Imperial War Museum North’s spaces, can be understood from a hyperobject’s characteristics:
They are viscous, which means that they “stick” to beings that are involved with them. They are nonlocal; in other words, any “local manifestation” of a hyperobject is not directly the hyperobject. They involve profoundly different temporalities than the human-scale ones we are used to. […] Hyperobjects occupy a high-dimensional phase space that results in their being invisible to humans for stretches of time. And they exhibit their effects interobjectively; that is, they can be detected in a space that consists of interrelationships between aesthetic properties of objects. The hyperobject is not a function of our knowledge: it’s hyper relative to worms, lemons, and ultraviolet rays, as well as humans.
Consequently, it is arguable that museum spaces reflect a ‘local manifestation’ of a hyperobject (in this case war). The above characteristics also can provide an understanding of who museums are for. For instance this example demonstrates that war as a hyperobject is relative to various human and nonhuman actors. War speaks to and is a result of not just humans and lived experiences, but is also shaped by (and not limited to) machines, animals, and sounds. These human and nonhuman entities intra-act within the context of war, but also within the museum space, because the Imperial War Museum North can be asserted to be a ‘local manifestation’ of war as a hyperobject.
Further evidence can be drawn between fluid and temporally unfixed notions of the museum space, with analysis by artist Hito Steyerl referencing a curious incident in 2014. A World War Two Soviet tank reportedly went to war in Eastern Ukraine by being driven off its museum memorial pedestal to a military checkpoint and killed three people.
‘One might think that the active historical role of a tank would be over once it became part of a historical display. But this pedestal seems to have acted as temporary storage from which the tank could be redeployed directly into battle. Apparently, the way into the museum—or even into history itself—is not a one-way street. Is the museum a garage? An arsenal? Is a monument pedestal a military base?’
Steyerl’s consideration within her research on ‘Museums in an Age of Planetary Civil War’ raises so many interesting implications, most of all that museum spaces could be inferred as providing temporary storage for their occupants, (in this case machine and humans) so that objects may be re-used. Therefore, the above examples demonstrate that when considering museum spaces within the context of posthumanist discourse, even physical museum spaces are more spatiotemporally fluid than they initially appear. This explores expanded notions of who museum audiences and participants are, in that these being solely human actors is flouted, with above examples illustrating museums are also for machines and weather, therefore broadening possibilities of who museums are for within contemporary practices.
With an expanded understanding of who museums are for, the case for fluid museum spaces will be explored further in that spaces facilitate human and nonhumans as audiences, but also provide an environment for diverse participants and curators. Gurian’s ‘Threshold Fear’ exemplifies barriers preventing people from accessing museums and provides guidance as to how these are overcome – similar to a toolkit format. In advocating for ‘congregant spaces’ Gurian hopes ‘we readjust the way we build, repair and reinstall museums, we will invite more citizens to join us. I once said I wished museum audiences to be as diverse as those to be found at any given moment in Grand Central Station.’ This comparison to a diverse train station is broad, in that stations are for people, machines, animals, bacteria, plants and a whole host of other entities. Advocating for the importance of ‘congregant spaces’ circles round the crux of the text, but limits possibilities by omitting to address museums as non-places, to avoid appearing to homogenise museums. By synthesising this with Massey, who asserts ‘places do not have single, unique ‘identities’; they are full of internal conflicts’. Therefore Gurian’s assertions can be expanded, by applying Massey’s ‘a global sense of the local, a global sense of place’ to museums; a social idea of space for human and nonhuman actors can be realised. Yorkshire Sculpture Park is evidence of the above assertion, whose strapline ‘art without walls’ pioneers sculptural work within a 500 acre estate; an outdoor gallery with fields, forest, lake and river. Therefore the gallery is hosted by multiple ecologies existing alongside one another. This strikes a respectful balance and mutual relationship by nurturing and cultivating the environment in return for an appropriate space to situate sculptures. Contemporary museology can expand notions of what a museum space is, in facilitating environments for audiences, participants and curators to thrive and coexist.
Similarly The Eden Project also cares for its ecology as an educational charity and social enterprise that is a leading example of how to present, conserve, and understand environments with extensive living collections. Their Mediterranean and Rainforest Biomes are spaces based on Buckminster Fuller’s notion of a geodesic system alongside biomimicry to create such unique spaces. The Eden Project do not describe themselves as a museum, but arguably are somewhat – in that alongside education and discovery, this site acquires, conserves and presents plants. Natural methods are used to protect plants, in that chemical pesticides and insecticides are replaced by animals, birds or insects, who are introduced into the ecosystem as predators. Through this symbiotic relationship with millions of creatures being welcome and invited to inhabit and exist within this space – a win-win situation. Even though human actors orchestrate these interventions, this is interesting to consider how museums can incorporate nonhuman entities as participants responsible for the care of the collection. Both these museum spaces exemplify methods that mutually benefit humans and nonhumans, when museum spaces are treated as whole ecologies with multiple intra-actions. This really embodies Gurian’s notions of many conflicting and diverse elements within museums, alongside how Massey’s global thinking and treatment of local spaces have the potential to operate within museological spaces.
From few selected examples, museum spaces within contemporary practices are for not just humans, but a whole host of other nonhuman actors within various capacities, as both audiences and participants. However physical museum spaces limit scope of ‘who museums are for?’ when considering a posthumanist stance, in that digital museum spaces also interrogate this.
When exploring whom museums are for within digital spaces, it is simplistic to reduce the museum online presence as being solely an extension to the museum. However it is important to treat the museum’s digital presence, in all forms it may encompass, as a separate space within its own right. By doing so, only then can we understand a more multi-perspectival view, to identify which actors encounter this space and in what capacity they operate.
In terms of online museums inhabiting intangible space, the prevalence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) illustrates the prevalence of alternative nonhuman curators. AI may be used in various capacities within digital museum spaces. The Anne Frank House has employed a Facebook Messenger Bot, to tailor specific digital, remote encounters between the museum and prospective visitors, by sharing photographs and information, depending on what the human recipient has chosen to engage with. This ‘bot’ operates tasks and responds quickly with efficiency and autonomy, according to your requests and interests. This bot is on the front line of museum access; this digital space can be accessed worldwide and may be an individual’s first encounter of accessing the collection. This experience is a finessed and comprehensive showcase of the museum and collection. The discussion also carried a social message within the conversation relating and referencing the wider context surrounding the collection. As an alternative space, we know that genuine exchanges occur though this technology, because outcomes are reached and the software facilitates ‘talking points’ for conversations. However the extent to which this could be considered as humans interacting with other humans, by utilising digital software as the facilitator, can be discussed.
By applying Marshall McLuhan’s assertion that technology is an extension of the human, it appears that under human curators, museum practices use digital spaces to facilitate alternative, accessible and remote engagements with objects and collections. To analyse and discern how nonhumans participate within digital spaces, a path that the information follows can be traced. With bots and AI, human curators firstly create objectives to inform software configuration that creates specific experiences. Algorithmic language is then created and replicated; this intra-action initially occurs between human actors with digital software through code; as a language that speaks with digital entities first within intangible spaces. Therefore, through algorithms, the digital software could be considered as the custodian and audience, in being the primary receiver of this content through this received information. Consequently, we as humans are the end users to receive and share this experience, but not the primary audience Even though digital entities are perceived to form the intermediary between ‘real’ human connections; they are nonetheless first to receive the content. This serves to reverse McLuhan’s arguably anthropocentric view of how technology is an expansion from the human. This can be asserted in that within digital museum spaces, humans can be seen as extensions from when the content is disseminated by digital entities, as illustrated above. By applying non-human centric ideology within the above examples, it could be reasoned that digital entities can be considered less as an intermediary to communicate and disseminate collections. Instead however, perceived as crucial producers and participants with memory and agency over its provision; the ability to generate algorithms of their own accord whilst interacting infinitely across space and time within the digital space. Consequently in regard to how we consider human and non-human actors within digital museum spaces, a consideration has been taken into account of how these actors relate to one another. Timothy Morton has described how ‘speciesism and racism is deeply entwined and makes the concept of a person super expensive. Artificial Intelligence makes the person very cheap’. By applying this relationship to museology, we understand the value placed on AI and digital technologies could even out value placed on human and non-human actors within the museum. This could arguably change how museums ask and critically reflect on their audiences, participants and producers, in democratising and widening scope when museums consider whom museums are for.
To springboard from the assertion that software can function as the primary audience within digital spaces, it is appropriate to then explore whom museums are for when digital entities can spatially expand and traverse between intangible and tangible spaces. High specification audio-visual and interactive installations are now ubiquitous within museum practice, whether this is the Big Picture Show [Appendix A] at Imperial War Museum North or 360 degree cinematic experiences, such as Hemisfèric at the Park of Arts and Sciences in Valencia. Using projection mapping and speakers, these digital spaces are able to produce to the most fluid and hybridized experiences within physical spaces. Light is an attractive object; drawing in humans and animals. A museum installation creates illusions and auras, arguably digitally expanding on Walter Benjamin’s concept of the object’s ‘aura’, but simultaneously flouts this, because of how audio-visual entities exist through duplicity. Light dances and sound bleeds to swell and consume spaces, these entities take collaborative ownership of surfaces and spaces by creating more illusory dimensional planes. Sound is a space-filling entity; this unique quality means it cannot be contained as easily. Therefore during the experience of working with sound in museums, it can take on the role of a unique mediator, in that its properties influence encounters with other exhibits. These potent shape shifters transform spaces into objects and objects into spaces to provide alternate ways the collection can be accessed. Audio-visual objects (projectors, speakers etc.) create choreographed museum installations, which are deceptive, in that the digital hardware can fully recede into the darkness and becomes almost invisible to the human viewer during this spectacle and partnership between light and sound. Expanding from the earlier bot example, these nonhuman digital actors create and expand from their own spaces in that these objects have the capacity to translate digital spaces that can exist in a ‘physical’ way. This can be explained through how light and sound is projected and amplified from a object, which indicates the digital object embodies a mediator role; in affecting other spaces and encounters by changing human perception of physical space. Therefore digital entities also may appear as a producer or mediator; because despite possessing premade content, human curators can never fully predict or understand what may be thrown out into a physical space; in how digital entities may respond to the existing physical spatial materiality that it inhabits. Consequently software and hardware that intertwines to create audio-visual museum spaces have characteristics of such fluid hybrids ¬– in that they are shape shifting digital actors within museums, assuming roles of producer, mediator and participant. Therefore physical and digital museum space can be considered as being created by and for a mass of co-existing human and nonhuman bodies within posthuman museology, which goes far to challenge that museums are for humans only.
The museum object can be used a vehicle to expand on ideas about who museums are for in continuing to challenge that museums are for humans only. The materiality turn as a concept within museology is useful to understand where contemporary practice surrounding objects is situated. This is materiality turn is explained by how we have now seen the benefit of two different museological approaches – the Disciplinary Museum (object and collections formed the centre of the individual, relying on the public’s assumed knowledge for interpretation) and New Museology (objects being used as a vessel for the story). Contemporary museology benefits from having seeing these two very different museological approaches, with an ironic shift in reverting to the objects’ materiality.
Dudley’s experience of encountering a Chinese Horse strongly advocates for a return to the materiality of the object, asserting that doing so would elicit sensory and emotive responses (contesting all previous museological approaches). However Dudley’s conclusion is based on the broad assumption of a universal pure vision (disregarding work of W.J.T Mitchell) and omitting pre-existing conditions by claiming to only know two stated characteristics known about the statue. However by teasing apart the following exhibition detail, Dudley suggests a material and object-led treatment of collections places value on wider ecologies:
They facilitated this by bringing about what they call an ‘intense, interactive’ kind of looking that gets visitors first to focus on the physical qualities of the objects, […each exhibit] centering each of those on one key object with a number of other objects leading off from it in order to evoke different strands of the stories concerned, encouraging visitors to concentrate primarily on objects and the relationships between them.
By using objects to communicate and provide each other’s interpretation, an importance is placed on a wider ecology in exploring how non-human entities coexist. This also has perhaps can draw on a navigating between spatial and temporal epochs.
‘Material Environments’ (The Tetley, Leeds) is an example of a challenging and risk-taking contemporary art exhibition. Working closely on this, it defied expectations of who museums are for by transforming gallery spaces into alternative environments through material, alongside continuous live experimentation. Within this, Phoebe Cummings created ‘A Ripening Surveillance’ (2018); an immersive constructed clay environment [Appendix A].This giant sculptural object sat within a giant polythene tent and had a water pipe plumbed in to keep the installation alive and sweating. This installation was not solely a visual spectacle; moisture and humidity provided a haptic experience and alternative smells provoked sensory responses. The sculpted environment triggered sweating and a raised body temperature when individuals stepped through this membrane to embrace this alternative fiction, a reminder this environment was not for humans, but belonged to the clay and other nonhuman entities within. The visual content included floral satellite canopies, which combined a digital entity with a natural blooming presentation; this provided a sublime marriage of the digital and ecological. Furthermore, the exhibition was framed around ‘live’ processes, so the installation was gradually added to in situ throughout the duration. The result being nobody ever saw the installation in the same way, because alongside the growing plants, time also contributed to this experience; clay sporadically dried, cracks grew, clay powder dispersed, structures fell, humidity levels ebbed and flowed. The constructed environment also hosted other living entities to propagate and thrive; clay trees and flowers nestled spiders and cobwebs, the clay pool with timed water sprays grew moss and mold as it remained ‘perpetually soft an in the same state as when it is made’ [Appendix A]. This directly challenged that museums are for humans only with insects, microorganisms, and organic life. Upon asking Cummings how the installation accommodated these non-human entities, she noted ‘the material has agency in the work and how the environment is active.’ The below is an excerpt from a personal correspondence between myself and Cummings, which really summarises the intra-actions embraced by the artist and art:
One of the aspects of clay that interests me is the way the material allows you to touch deep time; it contains the prehistoric landscape, it is the product of geological processes and was here before us and probably well after us. […] I think a lot about the pre-human world and the potential of a post-human future. In A Ripening Surveillance I wanted to combine a sense of something primordial but also ornate and at moments decorative. […] Materials, objects, plants all have voices to be heard and I hope the work enables those to come forward.
Cummings’ treatment of objects and materiality recognises that clay traverses the past, present and future, notwithstanding her Baroque and Rococo influences, but also how clay is a highly fluid object that exists between multiple spatial-temporal moments. This awareness situates her practice within contemporary art and historical moments, but also acknowledges intra-actions between past and present non-human actors that have, and are, contributing to clay’s materiality and processes. This exemplifies how museums can widen conversations surrounding whom museums are for, in ‘understanding museum objects as themselves “complex material objects” rather than mediating specific learning about the world or lives of other humans has been written about in the wider museum literature.’ Therefore emphasising the notion can be amplified within a return to materiality within museology. This consideration of applying object-oriented ontology has the potential to disregard relating objects to humans as frequently, resulting in a wider consideration of human and nonhuman intra-actions that have, are, and will contribute to the object.
Further ideas can be extended from the above theme raised by Cummings, in how objects may sit within time and space. By applying quantum theory to museum objects, we understand that ‘particles are unstable; not a solid thing that just exists permanently in a particular state, but they are affected by and always changing and responding to their historical and cultural moment.’ This consideration serves to bypass a one-dimensional museum narrative of the object as operating within a specific temporal or spatial moment. Dudley’s object-led approach to curation cites how objects can provide interpretation for one another, by facilitating links between relationships. However Dudley appears to approach discourses surrounding new materiality with a more one-dimensional perspective of the multiple places and times that objects are situated. This is explained well by Bergsdóttir, who asserts ‘comparing them [museum objects] rests on the presupposition that entities are fixed and pre-existing, whereas diffrac-tion considers how entities come together and create conditions for objects that come into being in the world as just one possibility of many.’ Hence giving a greater consideration of where objects are situated by considering an object’s materiality with a lens of multiplicity, in that objects are not just understood through layers, but through multiple planes of existence. Through multiple perspectives, greater considerations can be weighted on the prevalence of nonhuman actors in relation to the object. It is admittedly arguable that this multi-perspectival approach may not be appropriate to all exhibitions, in proving a challenge to interpret for audience accessibility and on a practical level for museum practitioners. However Morton suggests something that can be brought forward and applied to museum practice; It’s time to start turning up the volume on the thing we’re accessing and turn down the volume of the ‘correlater’. This cannot be measured, although contemporary practice already appears to prominently showcase voices of objects and participants, instead of the curator’s voice at the forefront of museum narratives.
When the question ‘who are museums for?’ ¬is asked – current answers largely focus on diverse people, individuals and communities, who ‘interact’ with and encounter the museum. To conclude, this study has expanded on this human-centric assertion using object-oriented ontology; by using examples to illustrate how nonhumans intra-act with museums. A fresh reflection of this question highlights a continuous thread that emerges from this exploration, which is the ‘intra-action’ between nonhumans and the museum. ‘The notion of intra-action recognises that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action’. Karen Barad’s term includes how human and nonhumans are co-consecutive and have ever-changing agencies and relationships; a continuous assertion in accounting for spatial and temporal fluidity.
Consequently when the question of who museums are for is asked, it is useful to observe and read the museum closely for intra-actions. Consequently by understanding what is happening, a wider understanding of whom the museum is for can be explored. This may result in an understanding of which human and nonhuman actors operate within and between museum objects and spaces. If museums broadly reflect on the question ‘who museums are for?’ in a holistic way to consider diverse nonhuman actors too; this exploration raises further questions as to how museums can specifically tailor practices to encompass and consider these diverse participants. As the cited examples demonstrate, these intra-actions are arguably plentiful (even more so within natural history collections), but appear sporadic in how museums reference and acknowledge the prevalence of nonhuman actors operating within contemporary museum spaces as audiences, participants and producers – rather than just objects. Consequently ‘museums could place greater emphasis on the value of unexpected connections produced through human and non-human encounters.’ Within different capacities, many theorists (Gurian, Dudley, Steyerl, Morton) have continually alluded to this assertion – the importance of this practicing and acknowledging diverse and cohabiting ecologies.
In conclusion, when coalescing analysis gathered from this exploration of who museums are for, it is evident museum spaces and objects can be considered as facilitators for nonhuman actors to use. Nonhumans also form the objects, audiences, participants and instigators. This has been drawn from an object-oriented ontology by challenging the anthropocentric view, through illustrative examples, that museums are solely places for humans. Museums are for bacteria to foster, for insects to inhabit, animals to traverse, for plants to clamber, weather to batter, and a space for light and sound to bleed, ebb and flow.