Museum Communication and Entrepreneurial Thinking

Abstract

Museums need to become competitive and to maximize their limited resources. To do so they need help from their visitors and from other institutions, they need to exchange and remix information in order to create relevance and innovation, and also they need money for various investments. Updating museums is often thought of in a commercial manner, inspired by commercial organizations that use marketing and entertainment in order to increase their profit or competitiveness. This entrepreneurial thinking can make museums to be self-sufficient and to avoid collaboration. The collaboration between museums and other institutions (commercial, cultural, nongovernment, publishing) or with the general public is thus neglected and also the need for a personal relation and a personalized experience for the visitor. The relationship approach is connected with the notion of reciprocation which, according with sociologists, is central to the well-being of any society. Even though reciprocation isn’t always equal or fair, both economic entrepreneurs and members of the publishing industry have social preoccupations, tied to the idea of awareness. Museums and other cultural institutions, due to bureaucracy, are insufficiently interested in the idea of reciprocity witch, in museum studies terms, could also be called participation and it is associated with the idea of awareness.
Museum communication can be seen as a kaleidoscope combining four discursive approaches: promotion (marketing), awareness (NGO-s), information (journalism), education (more or less institutionalized and open to the new).