2025_ #08 L’essor des contre-muséologies

[in French] Issue 2025/8 of L’essor des contre-muséologies is about several types of museums. Confronting the dominant model of the museum—born of the French Revolution and rooted in bourgeois values—reformist museologists strive to democratize it, while popular or community-based initiatives attest to its rejection.

Since the 1960s, these two  currents have proposed new directions for museology, promoting an approach and a governance model grounded in reflexivity, territorial issues, and social participation, so that the institution becomes an extension of broader social projects.

Presenting a portrait of counter-museologies from an international perspective—bringing together the Americas, Europe, and Africa—this volume offers, in ten chapters, a collective, analytical, and experiential reflection that brings to light both the arguments underlying the contestation of the “Museum” and avenues for action to restore legitimacy to sites of memory and other cultural organizations.

It highlights the historical expression of this resistance, which crystallized in 1985 with the creation of the Mouvement international pour une nouvelle muséologie (MINOM) in Lisbon, with testimonies offering previously unpublished insights into its founding. This publication thus marks, in its own way, the 40th anniversary of this movement.

Eds. Sarah Turcotte, Anne-Lou Galassini and Jean-Marie Lafortune.

Volume 8 is available online for free download.