Museums as communal spaces

This thesis asks the questions "How does the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' outreach program make its collection relevant and accessible to members of local communities," and "How does the MMFA's outreach program effect these community members' relationship to the Museum?" This study is informed by Douglas Worts' call to establish meaningful and responsive communication between museums and the diverse and emerging cultural realities of their local communities. It is also informed by Nicholas Bourriaud's "relational aesthetic" in which artworks are judged based upon the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt. The chosen methodology is "educational criticism" which involves describing, analysing, interpreting, and evaluating everyday school activity in order to understand it more fully. Data was collected through a series of observations and interviews with museum staff, community workers and participants