Trials of dialogue. MAET and the experimentation of a collaborative future

Abstract

In the last decade, the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography of the University of Turin has experienced a phase of renewal of its narrative modalities. Despite its temporary closure, the institution was able to take opportunities and face the challenges caused by the interpretive and audience turns. The Museum has explored the issues of accessibility, engagement, inclusive mediation and collections’ meaning-making that the collaborative turn in the fields of museology and museography entail. This paper aims to retrace, through a reflective approach, the participatory projects (“Tongue to Tongue. A Collaborative Exhibition”, “The Art of Making the Difference” and “A Piece about Us”) which - by means of storytelling techniques, relational art and performing arts - transformed the Museum into a space of dialogue between different forms of cultural representation, co-production of new values and shared authority. Such an unprecedented social agency questions the future of the institution, close to reopening.