The museum as an arena for cultural citizenship : Exploring modes of engagement for audience empowerment

The museum as an arena for cultural citizenship: exploring modes of engagement for audience empowerment. The article looks at museums as democratic institutions from the perspective of cultural citizenship and cultural representation as well as investigating the notions of participation and engagement. Located in the context of new museology, the article looks at the audience engagement from the museums perspective and investigates participatory and communicative choices for the museum and how the different modes of engagement can be implemented in museums by bringing numerous examples from practice. It also briefly describes barriers to participation in the museum organisation. In investigating the visitors/public's perspective, the article discusses how people switch between the different roles in museums and asks a question about motivations for participating