Great Expectations: Reflections on Museums and Canada

A provocative, progressive rejoinder to the status quo, from the perspective of a disrupter and global leader in the museum world. The challenge to transform museums is unapologetically real and complicated. But everything we learn about reconciliation, science and biodiversity, climate change, and sustainability gives us the confidence and freedom to break through the conventions of the past. Each essay in this collection emphasises key features that are driving change in museums, such as globalization, society, authenticity, and technology. Each raises anew older themes within the canon of museology: information versus knowledge, diversity and plurality, the unending accumulation of objects and the incompleteness of collections, modes of perception, and insularity. What emerges is a new way of being a museum that is outward looking and global, and which includes chaos and surprise. A provocative, progressive rejoinder to the status quo, from the perspective of a disrupter and global leader in the museum world. The challenge to transform museums is unapologetically real and complicated. But everything we learn about reconciliation, science and biodiversity, climate change, and sustainability gives us the confidence and freedom to break through the conventions of the past. Each essay in this collection emphasises key features that are driving change in museums, such as globalization, society, authenticity, and technology. Each raises anew older themes within the canon of museology: information versus knowledge, diversity and plurality, the unending accumulation of objects and the incompleteness of collections, modes of perception, and insularity. What emerges is a new way of being a museum that is outward looking and global, and which includes chaos and surprise.