DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2019.v07i08.005

Pages: 569-571

Galleries and museums are known as the institutions responsible for transferring the knowledge and cultural heritage. For the last decades, they become the subject of the largest interest for the people studying the theory of culture, and - what follows - those institutions serve as a polygon for numerous transformations. The consumer of the museum’s space has evolved, together with the surrounding space. The institutions themselves were forced to evolve, tuning into the establishment of the relation with the spectator, becoming more open to the connections with the contemporary world. The phenomenon was observed by Nina Simon, american curator and museologist. She has described it in 2010 and tagged it with the term: “the concept of a participational museum”. Assuming that the visitor is an active recipient of the content presented in an exhibition, she rejects the notion that the visitor’s role is to be an “empty vessel” into which the Knowledge can be poured. The approach of the full participation finds its place. Simon goes even further with her theory, saying that the recipient can freely comment and process the elements of the exhibition. Ipso facto, that recipient can influence those alteration processes. The group of the recipients has been vastly expanded - the museum’s space potentially targets every human being.