Networked Knowledge and Epistemic Authority in the Development of Virtual Museums

This chapter, like the other contributions in this volume, focuses on emerging practices around collections, stressing change rather than continuity. Our material highlights the growing role of images as interfaces for both knowledge production and circulation in museums. While images are an incredibly rich site to study transformations brought about by digitization and databasing of collections, they are also useful handles to address how digital infrastructures and networks may be changing the work of museums more generally. Images are one of the several kinds of interfaces that are appearing in museums and that provide new possibilities for knowledge creation – an increasingly widespread view in museums. Since digitization is not “simply” a translation, it is crucial to consider what new possibilities are generated in the course of remediating material and embedding it in a new context. In the case of images, as they become interfaces, the dynamics
of knowledge production change. We have shown in our analysis how the databased material gets connected time and again to other images, whether from print-on-paper reference books or from user-generated (holiday) snapshots.
These observations remind us that the database, like any other sources of authoritative knowledge, is most effective when it remains in dialogue with other sources. Whether this holds across all instances of interfaces currently arising in museums is a fascinating question for further research. Innovations in museums – think of pop-up initiatives, sister museums in Europe, the US, and the Middle East, apps for social interpretation or crowd curation – all seem pointed to interaction as a core value. The new skills we noted as essential to dealing with images as interfaces may also be crucial to dealing with these developments. On the other hand, just as we stress the importance of not reifying the database and not equating it with the knowledge of the museum, interaction and diversification of publics may need to be re-anchored to the collection and material culture that are at he heart of museums if they are to retain their distinct value relative to other cultural institutions.