Museumsforskning som museumsutvikling

Museum studies as museum development This text points to the strategic value of museological studies for the development of the museum sector. In Norway, the museum is the sole exception to the rule that a medium or a cultural institution of any importance be regarded as an academic field of study. Lacking the kind of systematic knowledge, critical reflection and discussion of basic premises which normally originate in independent outsider positions, Norwegian museums are consequently deprived of a vital stimulus. In the case of the university museums, the absence of attention to common, specifically museum related problems is seen as an obstacle to che development of coherent institutions out of the various scientific disciplines. In a wider perspective, museums are seen as being not fully established within the cultural public sphere. The enviable attention paid to other kinds of cultural products partly depends on university courses furnishing critics, reviewers and debaters with descriptive languages, analytical skills and evaluative standards. Without these courses, and without the research activity chat makes chem possible, even literature, painting, and film would miss che kind of qualified conversations that actually mediate between creative activity and the interests of a wider public. Hence the establishment of a museological field of research is seen as a precondition for comparable activities highlighting museum events, pointing out their more or less interesting problematics and their possible relevance to society.