The Liquid Museum: New Institutional Ontologies for a Complex, Uncertain World

Abstract In a world where rigid, fixed, and obsolete institutional structures and forms of analysis are increasingly problematic, new ontologies and knowledge practices are required that more clearly match the experience of contemporary circumstances. In this chapter I ontologically refashion the museum's agency as an institutional form and as a series of practices as liquid, mobile, and relational, and as heterogeneous assemblages made up of material and expressive forms enmeshed in diverse collectives comprising many human and nonhuman elements. As an assemblage, the liquid museum and its components are mobile, cohere with others, territorialize, and also disperse or deterritorialize according to certain conditions and events. Change, therefore, becomes a process, both intended and unintended, in which agency is rethought in terms of relational resources and institutional capacities. By rethinking the museum in these terms, we better equip institutions ontologically and practically to engage with hot topics of societal relevance and importance such as environmental change.