From Re-Construction to Co-Production: remembering and restaging past participatory exhibitions

In the context of an increasing emphasis on co-production within museum and gallery practice, this research project asks: can the history of participatory art exhibitions lend insight into present practices, and conversely, how can the process of restaging embed the active participation of the public.

I will focus particularly on landmark exhibitions which, in their original form, had a significant participatory element. My contention is that the restaging of these exhibitions, realized as part of temporary exhibition programmes and motivated by art historical interests, do not yet have a lasting impact on the practices of the museums and galleries. Importantly, neither has re-staging impacted how participatory exhibitions are art-historically valued, particularly in relationship to the public perspective or experience of participation. Considering these as lost opportunities, the project aims to approach past exhibitions not only through the lens of Exhibition History but also through their potential to inform, and be informed by, models and frameworks for participation and co-production.

Within current museum practice, an interest in participation is evidenced through a broad adoption of the term co-production. This term is increasingly used to describe public involvement in both design processes and the realization of exhibitions and programmes. This research aims to establish how the restaging as a form of re-activation of historical exhibitions might also act as a vehicle for public involvement in the authorship of an artwork. This will impact conventional attitudes towards archiving and documenting the process of restaging to prioritise the public perspective, and challenge our understanding of, and propose a checklist of methods to allow public involvement and co-production in the re-activation and re-interpretation of Exhibition History.