Imagining future museums to be like kitchens
I came across Christine Litz's paper, 'The Museum of the Future: From Dining Room to Kitchen,' during my thesis research, and I absolutely fell in love with her analogy of imagining the museum as a kitchen – a dynamic space for experimentation and creation.
Litz points out that, currently, museums resemble formal dining rooms, where everything is preplanned and formal, with limited interaction. However, if we were to reimagine the museum as a kitchen, it would become more public, an open invitation to engage actively within the space.
I find myself returning to this analogy repeatedly as I design exhibitions within museums. I constantly ponder how to make them more participatory, how to initiate dialogues, and how to better serve the community.
I'm curious, what do you envision for a museum experience? What would you like to see or do in a museum?
Excerpt from the original text :
The Museum of the Future. From Dining Room to Kitchen.
Christine Litz
"If I were to imagine a museum of the future I would like to think of it as a kitchen. This is probably because I often perceive museums today as a Dining Room, where the visitors are invited to dinner which the museum has cooked,the tableware is diligently set, the best silver is polished, the order of food is chosen, the light are dimmed, and the seating arrangements are well-thought-out.It leaves the guests to take part in the conversation during the dinner the topics of which have already been predetermined.To imagine a kitchen not only strengthens the production side but serves as a metaphor that touches the very basis of representation.
Because having guests in a kitchen is quite different to inviting guests in a dining room. The kitchen that I imagine is publicly accessible with no commercial interests and everybody is invited to contribute. Everybody brings something, not a complete dish, but ingredients, knowledge, skills, stories. Some things are cooking, burning, simmering. There are a lot of things to be negotiated amongst the participants, it is as much as possible a setting forl’avenir – and maybe in the end there is something to eat. Maybe not. There is experience, encounter and exchange for sure."
