PROXIMITY IN THE MUSEU BLAU:

ANALYSIS OF THE NIGHT OF THE MUSEUM, 16-17 MAY 2015

Ned Somerville
Graduate Student of the History of Science
Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain

1) Introduction, Objective, and Justification:

a) Contextualization of the Museu Blau and its goal of Proximity
b) Emergence Model of Scientific Communication

2) Methodology:
a) Meetings Outside the Museum
b) Meetings Inside the Museum
c) Infrastructural Limitations
d) Institutional Risks

3) Results:
a) Data from the Night of the Museum
b) Feedback

4) Analysis:
a) Non-Participants at the Night of the Museum
b) Alternative Narratives and Creative Problem-Making
c) Emergent Goals and Resources
d) Conclusions
1). Introduction, Objective, and Justification

Science communication is a field with deep interest for historians of science. The saying is true: Nature
does not speak for herself. People speak on her behalf, using many models and mediums of
communication. Analyzing this process of scientific communication (past and present) reveals
fundamental assumptions regarding “what is science?” and “what is the public?” Ultimately, these are
viewed as historically imbedded terms, with ever-evolving local significance.

As a graduate student at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona studying the history of science, part of
my training is to complete an intership with a local organization involved in scientific communication.
The purpose of this experience, beyond gaining practical experience in this field, is to use science-
studies concepts and resources in developing a personal analysis.

My internship was with the Museu Blau, a natural science museum on the outskirts of Barcelona. The
goal of my internship with the museum was to spend 108 hours developing, implementing, and
analyzing an act of public engagement with a science institution, specifically, the annual Night (and
Day) of the Museum, in which the Museu Blau is free and hosts special activities for the public.
Specifically, my job was to:

• Establish contacts within the local district of Sant Marti

• Elaborate a program of activities
• Elaborate a description of the event for diffusion
• Coordinate the logistics of the event
• Evaluate the results

The emphasis on local participation for this event was motivated by the museum's strategic plan, in
which is found “Specific objective 1.2.2: Promote participation and collaboration with the surrounding
environment (mainly the district of Sant Martí).”1 Additionally, the museum's website elaborates the
following under the headline value of “Proximity:”

The local neighborhood of the museum offers the opportunity to establish strong ties and relationships.
From a good understanding of the territory and working with social relations, we are establishing joint
projects with associations and educational networks.2

1a). Contextualization of the Museu Blau and its goal of Proximity

The Museu Blau traces its roots back to the Museu Martorell, Barcelona's first natural history museum,
opened in 1882 in the city's first large public park. Over the course of a century this entity grew and
expanded to include Zoological and Geological Museums, as well as a Botanical Garden located on the
slopes of neighboring Montjuic. In 2008, unification of these institutions was completed under the
name of El Museu de Ciéncies Naturals de Barcelona, and this collective subsequently birthed the
Museu Blau, which opened its doors for the first time in 2011 in a repurposed building in the Sant
Marti district on the Northernmost edge of Barcelona. The Blau´s contents-- preserved animals, plants,
fossils, and minerals-- were translated from their previous home in the Martorell Museum, restored,
and recycled for the Blau, this time as exemplars of James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis.

1 Translated from Catalan. Originally: Objectiu específic 1.2.2. Promoure la participació i la collaboració amb l'entorn
proper (el districte de Sant Martí principalment). Objectiu específic
2 Translated from Catalan. Original: http://museuciencies.cat/qui-som/museu-i-societat/proximitat/
For the Museu Blau´s closest neighbors, however, the history of the Blau is not one of an institution,
but one of the land. During the second half of the 19th Century, the district of Sant Marti became known
as the “Manchester of Catalonia”, undergoing massive industrialization, primarily textile factories.
1,300 of these industries closed down between the years of 1963 and 1990, leaving the area
economically depressed and the target of a major urbanization endeavor (project 22@) which the city
hoped would revitalize the district in the same way that the 1992 Summer Olympics had transformed
the city's downtown. The Forum of Cultures was born-- a 141 day international event with a $2.3
billion pricetag and a legacy of public controversy that continues to this day. The Forum also left in its
wake an empty icon of architecture, Herzog & de Meuron's ultra-modern “Forum Building” and
auditorium. This big blue triangular building sat empty for seven years before being repurposed as the
Museu Blau (literally, Blue Museum).

The circumstances outlined above have challenged the museum's public image from the start. The
history of the Forum is locally perceived as an example of opportunistic, bureaucratic over-reach and
mismanagement-- a legacy which the Blau has inherited by association. Additionally, the Blau sits on a
specific piece of land once occupied by the Castell del Camp de la Bota, a 19th Century military
building used in the 20th Century for Franco's troops and later as a prison and a place for dictatorship-
era executions. During the city-wide urban reforms, this building was destroyed along with the
surrounding shantytown built up largely by impoverished Andalusian immigrants. Today, the historical
marker for the Camp de la Bota, a small commemorative plaque, sits adjacent to the Museu Blau, and
is criticized locally as “too little/too late.” The responsibility for this perceived disregard for local
history is also associated with the Blau. Finally, the Blau is housed in a re-purposed space with inherent
barriers to community participation. It's location (isolated, on the outskirts of town), design
(unintuitive, labyrinthine), infrastructure (single-purpose spaces, difficult to adapt) are the results of
this “Plan B” use of the Forum Building for a museum. Within this historical/social contextualization,
the Museu Blau's goal of proximity takes on new meaning and importance.

1b). Emergence Model of Scientific Communication

In alignment with the museum's historical context and goal of proximity, I have decided to utilize a
model of emergence in the design and analysis of the “Night at the Museum” event. This model differs
from “Public Understanding of Science” models (which describe communication primarily from
scientists to the public) and even “Public Engagement with Science” models (which describe reciprocal
communication primarily from active citizen groups to the scientists). In the model of emergence,
scientific communication is described as a two-way street. More importantly, this “give and take” is not
merely viewed as an aim of this communication, but as an inherent characteristic. As sociologists Maja
Horst and Mike Michael explain:

“Crucial here is the principle that there is no privileged direction of information as in the other
two [Understanding and Engagement] models. It is through the process of science
communication that it becomes possible to approach an identification of a public and a science
as well as a communicative relationship between them. Neither is there any stable medium
which functions as an intermediary for the flow of information and knowledge. The entities
themselves are seen as mediators, that is, as actants who change, and are changed through, the
event of coming together” 3
3 Maja Horst & Mike Michael (2011): On the Shoulders of Idiots: Re-thinking Science Communication as ‘Event’,
Science as Culture, 20:3, 283-306
From this perspective, the Museu Blau does not mediate between science and its publics, it brings them
together and is co-created with them both. During the course of the preparation and realization of the
Night of the Museum event, the particular quality of this “coming together” took on various forms.

2). Methodology

Given a budget of zero and a few starting contacts, my job was to physically go out into the community
and, over time, build up a network of relationships. These relational resources were to be fundamental
in the development and realization of the final event. But more than just a means, these relational
resources represented an end in itself for the Museu Blau's goal of proximity.

The development of this relational network grew naturally from the starting point of (primarily) two
contacts. These first two meetings were crucial in supplying further contacts in the community, as can
be seen in the concept map below in which each text bubble represents a physical meeting, aka, a
moment of “coming together.”

Figure 1. Moments of “Coming Together”

Green- meetings outside the museum Blue- meetings at the museum

Purple- activities during the event Red Shadow- canceled meetings/activities

2a). Meetings Outside the Museum

In order to establish proximity, one entity must take the first step. Thus, it was important that the first
round of meetings take place outside the museum. The format for these meetings varied, but usually
started with my explaining a little bit about the museum and about the project of proximity, and inviting
ideas for ways in which the goals and resources of the Museu Blau could merge with the goals and
resources of various community actors. Or, to state it in the stronger sense, how these goals could
emerge together.

From the very beginning, the difficulty of communicating the concept of emergence became apparent.
Or maybe what was difficult was for this concept to be believed. The questions that came back to me in
these meetings gave evidence of a perceived dichotomy between the benefit to the museum and the
benefit to the participating artists in the event. Who is helping who, exactly? And often just below the
surface lingered another question... whose event is this?

This question, in fact, became the focus of the first press release offered by the museum regarding the
upcoming event:

Premiered at the Blau!

A night in which our neighbors are the authentic protagonists. The installations of the Museu Blau are
converted into a space of creation and festivity, hand in hand with the collectives of our neighborhood.
Musical acts, dance, theater, and much more.4

This statement was intended to convey the extent to which this event was an embodiment of authentic
collaboration. But the extent to which these words were to become a reality remained a task to be lived
out during the following months of preparation for the event.

2b). Meetings at the Museum

The second iteration of meetings took place, for the most part, at the Museu Blau. During these
meetings I showed potential participants around the museum, and together we evaluated potential
performance spaces throughout the exhibit and in the peripheral zones such as the vestibule, Sala de
Actos, medioteca, exterior area, etc...

These meetings better represented a “coming together” of entities because this time the artists were
able to experience first-hand the narrative of the museum itself. They were then able to consider how
they might collaborate with its architecture, contents, and design in order to successfully adapt their
performances.

2c). Infrastructural Limitations and Opportunities

“Coming together” is a two-sided coin, and from an infrastructure standpoint the Museu Blau is ill-
equiped for multi-use. During the course of the planning of this event I encountered the following
obstacles:
• Lack of convenient electrical outlets within the exposition.
• Sound and video projections within the exhibit are restrictively automated.
• Lack of portable lighting equipment within the museum.
• Limited portable sound equipment within the museum.
• The “Sala de Actos” has limited use as a theatrical stage due to lighting and staging limitations.
• The exhibition area is prone to vibrations during music/dance/movement events, which in-turn
threaten the safety of the material heritage stored there.

These aside, certain features of the museum were able to be effectively re-purposed. Most notably:
• The water projection zone in the exhibit offers a good open space for performances.

4 Translated from Catalan. Originally: Estrenat al Blau! Una nit en la qual els veïns són els autèntics protagonistes. Les
instal·lacions del Museu Blau es converteixen en espai de creació i festivitat colze a colze amb els col·lectius del nostre
entorn. Actuacions musicals, dansa, teatre i molt més.
 • The vestibule projection is easily accessed and modified (although sound projection is limited).
• Glass-walled classrooms can be modified to form temporary exhibit space for local entities.
• The mediateca, slightly rearranged, offers plenty of space for hosting story-tellings.
• The outter buildings of the museum are convenient as a locations for food-stands, or as the
backdrop for outdoor theater or dancing.
• Aula 4 provides a convenient, semi-private space for performers to warm-up and store
belongings.

2d). Institutional Risks

“We are taking a big risk here.” This became an oft-repeated phrase among museum staff during the
final moments of preparation for the “Night of the Museum.” As a large institution, the risks of
collaborating with unprofessional, and largely unknown, entities is considerable. Should something
unexpected and unfortunate happen before or during the event, the museum risks compromising
• its carefully maintained public identity
• the safety of the material heritage under its care
• the trust it has worked to maintain with the public
• the relationships it has established with with local entities
• the educational scientific narrative of its exhibitions

Regarding the last point, it is worth pointing out that, even if nothing went wrong during the event,
including artistic performances into the exhibition space inherently changes its scientific narrative.
After all, nature does not speak for herself. The exhibit space, therefore, is a tightly controlled space.
Lighting, music, content, design, text, etc., all have been carefully planned to tell a certain story. While
it is true that the exhibit aims to be interactive and engaging, these opportunities are carefully
premeditated and controlled. For example, a visitor can select from various videos to watch which
show virtual scientists explaining their work, but there are no real ones on hand to talk back to. The
exhibit on its own represents a “public understanding of science” model of scientific communication: a
diffusion of information from scientists to the public.

The emergence model imagines an active public that can't not interact-- altering meanings of science
and of themselves accidentally, on purpose, and in between. The Night of the Museum was an
opportunity to make this interaction explicit, to shine the spotlight on this shape-shifting of meanings.
In essence, this was asking the museum to relinquish interpretive control of their own exposition.

This “vying for control” is part of what sets the Museu Blau apart from the Besòs Civic Center a few
blocks away. The Civic Center, unburdened by personal motives, acts as a support service for local
culture. But unlike a Civic Center, the Museu Blau is not a “tabula rasa.” It has its own agenda to
champion. It's not a culture-amplifier, it's a culture-creator. As such, it's relationship to the community
is not as supporter, but as collaborator-- a much more challenging role. For this reason, the
infrastructural limitations and institutional risks of authentic community participation may be much
higher in the Museu Blau than in the Civic Center, but the rewards of proximity are that much greater.

3). Results
3a). Data from the Night of the Museum

All told, the Night of the Museum involved the participation of 13 acts representing the district of Sant
Marti. Of these, 6 represented the participation from the neighborhood of Besòs i Maresme.

Sant Marti Besòs

Baile Enfemenino: Flamenco Contemporanio
Cia Cero: performance “Pajaros”
Cia Dimpro: baile “Kataratas”
Cia Dimpro: baile “Puppets”
Gloria Llevat: baile “Own Dialogue”
Romain y Quim: Performance “El Otro”
Batucada: Los Chipirones
Lipdub Besòs y Maresme
Assn. Africa Pasteef: percussion y baile
Presentacion de la Cursa de Besòs
Assn. Ambar Prim: Exposicion de Obras
Baile Sardana
Assn. Ambar Prim: Cuenta Cuentos

Figure 2: Schedule of Activities for the Night and Day of the Museum

The Night of the Museum drew 2,865 visitors to the museum, a record since the museum opened in
2011 (see graph below). The following day, Sunday, saw a much reduced attendance from previous
years, a result which some attributed to other activities (including a soccer game) which coincided with
the event.

Figure 3: Attendance Comparison for the Night of the Museum, 2014 and 2015
During the event, approximately 6 museum employees worked overtime to make sure everything went
according to plan, coordinating simultaneous activities in various parts of the museum using a
whatsapp group to keep everyone informed. Meanwhile, the various performances were photographed
professionaly and filmed semi-professionaly with the intention of sharing this content with the
participants for their own promotional uses.

3b). Feedback

During the event, museum staff reacted positively to the performances, expressing pleasant surprise at
the high quality of many of the acts. The public responded favorably as well, clapping and cheering the
performances and giving their praise afterwords in person to many of the performers.

Over the next few days I received unprompted feedback from many participating entities, all of it
positive. Comments included:
• “We really enjoyed it a lot”
• “We are a great team”
• “It was a great experience for us and we think it fit really well in that space”
• “We hope this is the start of a good friendship between the museum and the batucada.”

4). Analysis

What can we learn about the museum and its publics from these moments of coming-together?
Traditional feedback mechanisms (attendance counts and congratulatory feedback) are too limited and
museum-centered to enable a full analysis of this larger-frame question. The task at hand is not to
discover to what extent the museum accomplished its own goals (thus reinforcing the public-museum
dichotomy), but rather to evaluate the emergence of new, collaborative goals through this process of
coming together.

This alternate approach means we will need new questions and new sources of material to analyze. One
such source can be found in what Isabelle Strenger, in The Cosmopolitical Proposal, calls “idiotic
behavior:”5“those reactions which appear alien, confusing or disruptive to the design of the science

5 Stengers, I. (2005) The cosmopolitical proposal, in: B. Latour and P. Webel (Eds) Making Things Public, pp. 994–1003
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
communication event, that is, those actions which are not sensible (in the sense of making no sense) in
the particular context of that event.” Evaluating moments such as these opens the way to creative
problem-making and makes us “critically reflect on 'what we are busying doing'—indeed it ‘suspends
the habits that make us believe that we know what we know and who we are, that we hold the meaning
of.” 6

4a). Non-Participants at the Night of the Museum

We can start by analysing the behavior of the five “non-participants” at the Night of the Museum-- that
is, the entities which canceled or opted-out of participation. The most common reason given was,
essentially, “Something came up.” For example, the day before their performance, the Casa de Ceuta
called to cancel their Chirigota performance after their musician was injured in a car crash. Wild
Freedom, a local hard rock group, cancelled 1 month in advance due to a scheduling issue. Both of
these entities spoke with me on the phone and expressed regret that they would be unable to participate
and that I could count on them for the next event.

Another type of response was absolute radio silence. Raquel, president of the commercial agents of
Besòs, met with the museum and discussed planning a food festival for the Day of the Museum, along
with activities for kids. Following this meeting, and a phone call in which she promised to call back
“after dinner,” subsequent phone calls and emails to Raquel were not answered and all attempts to get
back in touch have failed. This highlights the fragility of relation-building, and the always-present
possibility of these efforts ending poorly.

The Ambar Prim theatre group called two weeks before their performance of “Aqui no Paga Nadie” in
order to cancel. Their spokesperson seemed very perplexed, and gave a number of reasons, citing
infrastructure limitations in the “Sala de Actos (primarily the lack of theatrical lighting equipment) as
well as a lack of resolve among the actors to go through with the plan (one was going to be away that
day, another was having doubts, etc.). The impression I had was that the Ambar Prim association felt
like they had bit off more than they could chew and their original enthusiasm had now turned to
anxiety. Hoping not to recreate a total exclusion scenario similar to that of Raquel, I reassured them
that it was ok to cancel and later on provided an alternative opportunity for them to participate in
(story-telling in the medioteca) which they happily accepted.

These experiences with the Ambar Prim theatre group and with Raquel highlight another type of risk in
this coming-together: the risk to the participating entities. These small, local entities are often
comprised of just a few people, and the risks become less abstract, more personal, and therefore
stronger.

4b). Alternative Narratives and Creative Problem-Making

The case of Victor and his blues band is an interesting one to consider. Victor came to visit the museum
in order to see the space and consider participating during the event. I gave him a tour, informed him
about our sound equipment limitations and lack of a budget. Later on, I received the following in an
email from Victor:

6 Maja Horst & Mike Michael (2011): On the Shoulders of Idiots: Re-thinking Science Communication as ‘Event’,
Science as Culture, 20:3, 283-306
 “...I was talking with the group about it and we came to the conclusion that this project is not for us. We
think it's a great idea and also very interesting, but that there is a lack of respect on behalf of your
superiors in the museum. It's not a question of money, although that would be fair, it's more a question of
equipment and respect for culture and for music. I'm sorry to say no to the project, and of course you
understand that everything I've said is something that doesn't depend on you.” 7

At face value, two things are apparent here:

• Victor is sensitive to what he considers a perceived “lack of respect”, and,
• Victor makes a distinction between me and my “superiors in the museum.”

As to the first point, Victor's concerns takes us back to the fundamental dichotomy: Who is helping
who, exactly? And, whose event is this? In contrast to the museum's narrative of collaboration and
shared ownership, Victor's narrative appears to be the following: the museum wants to use me to help
them with their event. In this light, it may be that what Victor calls “lack of respect” is actually an issue
of perceived “lack of commitment,” in which the museum is viewed as disingenuous in its stated goals.

As to the second point, Victor raises the issue of my own identity. In the context of this event, who am
I? During my meetings with potential participants, in their eyes did I represent the museum? If not,
then in what sense do these meetings “count” as moments of coming-together between the museum and
community? Perhaps I am more like a mediator, carrying messages and negotiating contracts between
entities. I might also note that, in my meetings, I felt that my identity came to be primarily that of “the
foreigner:” an ignorant but interested learner of whatever cultural or artistic heritage they had to share
with me and the museum. This, rather than hinder my ability to connect with these entities, helped me a
great deal, allowing me to gain trust as a neutral entity. For the museum, my identity was also that of
the “student intern:” an unprofessional and largely unknown entity with which they entrusted the
management of this project. (This last part adds further insight to the meaning of the phrase “We are
taking a big risk here.”)

And what about the museum's identity? Victor mentions my “superiors in the museum,” but this image
of an ultimate decision-making entity is too simplistic. The museum is organized into departments,
each with distinct concerns and priorities, and decision-making is made through a process of
negotiation (see chart below):

Figure 4: Institutional Structure of the Museu Blau

7 Translated from Spanish. Original: “...Estuve hablando con el grupo de todo eso y llegamos a la conclusión de que no
es un proyecto echo para nosotros, Nos parece una muy gran idea y algo muy interesante, pero que no se le dedica el
respeto suficiente por parte de tus superiores del Museu. No es cuestión de dinero, aunque sería lo justo, Es más
cuestión de equipo y de respeto por la cultura y la música. Siento decirte que no al proyecto y por supuesto entiendo que
todo esto que te he dicho, es algo que no depende de ti.”
 Circled Items: Mangement Offices Yellow Items: Located in the Ciutadella
Blue items: Located in Blau Green Items: Located at the Botanical Garen

The Night and Day of the Museum event involved a negotiation between the following departments:
Activities, Communication, Education, Maintenance, Attention to the Public, Documentacion, Security,
Preventative Conservation, and Expositions. The coming-together of these departments for the
planning of this event merits an analysis of its own. This division of labor in the museum has important
consequences for the meaning of the museum's goal of proximity. Is this goal chopped up and shared
by the departments or is it the task of one department to negotiate its realization in the others? My
experience was more that of the later.

Without a simple and intuitive identity, what does it mean for local entities to make direct contact with
the museum? Perhaps the best achievement of this took place after the event, when Pere Viladot, head
of the Activities Department, sent a well-received thank you email to each of the participating entities.
Pere's email established a human identity for the museum. Unfortunately, that human identity will be
retiring this Summer, and will be replaced by someone else in the museum-- a reminder that more
fundamental than his human identity, Pere is a representative of a department. This identity can be
made no clearer than the way Pere signs his name at the end of his email: “Pere Viladot, Cap
d'Educatio i Actividats,” [bolded in the original]

Including Victor's alternative narrative in our analysis transforms it from “idiotic behavior” into an
opportunity for creative problem-making. Victor's narrative brings a new array of questions into the
foreground, and demonstrates the complexity of this act of public engagement.

4c). Emergent Goals and Resources

During the developing of the event, I helped to mediate a negotiation of benefits between the museum
and the participating entities in the event. A tentative list of these benefits is found below:

Benefit to the Museum Benefit to the participating artist

 Free performances -- Free performance space
Increased museum attendance -- An audience
Improved public relations -- Publicity (Facebook and web)
Evidence of proximity achievements -- Photos and video of performance

Generally speaking, this collaboration between actors was one of “give and take,” in which certain
services were offered in exchange for others. Missing in this representation is a consideration of the
emergent goals and resources that were co-created during this coming-together.

Emergent Resources:
Something new was created during the event when artists adapted their dance/improv performances to
the physical space of the museum. “Pajaros,” an improvisational performance by Cia Cero, took its
name from the birdsong exhibit in the natural history exposition. “Kataratas,” a contemporary dance
performance by Cia Dimpro, told an interpretive story of a drop of water along its life journey- utilizing
the museum's projected pool of water as an interactive element of their act. The Ambar Prim
Association read stories to children using resources from the museum's library. The Senegalese
percussionists, Africa Pasteef, shared of their their cultural and artistic heritage, giving new meaning to
the natural heritage collection of the museum. I consider each one of these examples to be an emergent
resource-- something new which resulted from the coming together of the museum with these artists.
These actions disrupted the normal scientific narrative of the museum, adding new perspectives to it,
and changing its meaning.

Emergent Goals:
Can we replace the “give and take” list of benefits and goals and replace it with new emergent ones that
better represent true collaboration? In the aftermath of the event, some ideas were initiated by the
participating entities. The Africa Pasteef Association expressed interest in performing in the vicinity of
the museum on weekends (for free) and helping increase the museum's presence in the neighborhood.
Despite expressing this to me, there has yet to be any direct contact between them and the museum
regarding this idea.

The dance company, Cia Dimpro, asked if the museum could help them with publicity for an upcoming
event they were planning. Originally the answer was yes, but afterward it came back that there had not
been enough time to coordinate a post on the museum's Facebook page. I pushed back at this response
a little. It seemed to me that the museum's Facebook page, managed by the communication department
and representing not just the Blau but the entire Museus de Ciencias Naturales collective, would be
very hesitant to publish such a post. There are currently no similar types of posts being published on
this page, and the reciprocal benefit to the museum for this type of post would be almost zero. To
publish this post would be a clear case of a “give” without a tangible “take.” This post would represent
an act of relational investment-- and perhaps open up possibilities for the emergence of new,
collaborative goals. I asked Pere Viladot if he really thought that this type of post would become a
reality in the future. “It has to.” He responded. “Well,” he added, “That's my opinion.”

4d). Conclusions
During my initial interview with Pere, before being offered the intership, we talked about the early
history of the Blau's predecessor, the Museu Martorel. Upon opening its doors as the first purpose-built
public museum of any kind in Barcelona, donations to its collection began pouring in from private
sources. The museum's publics donated to its contents-- a fascinating historical example of the
emergence model. It was out of this first conversation that the basic idea for the Night at the Museum
event was born.

The Night of the Museum was a burst of inspiration, with institutional approval. What is needed now is
institutional commitment. The museum's strategic plan emphasizes proximity (“promote participation
and collaboration with the surrounding environment”), but it remains unclear from this document the
form that this should take. This lack of definition makes shared responsibility for the task between
museum departments difficult. Also unclear is the means by which the museum is held accountable to
this goal, or rather, what consequences would result from its neglect. Thus, the project of proximity
lacks emergency, sifting its way down the priority chain to become a project for a student intern.

If proximity is to be grasped in its most significant sense, the Museu Blau must consider its own
identity and values and the those of its neighboring entities, and seek realistic projects that incorporate
authentic cooperation. It must be open to sharing ownership of projects, taking institutional risks, and
making long-term relational investments with the community that transcend the simple “give and take”
structure. Proximity, in this sense, means much more than increasing the number of local visitors to the
museum. More than just “being together” it implies an act of “becoming together.” This is a challenge
even person to person, and its complexity is amplified by the Museu Blau's institutional identity.

Works Cited

Stengers, I. (2005) The cosmopolitical proposal, in: B. Latour and P. Webel (Eds) Making Things
Public, pp. 994–1003 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Maja Horst & Mike Michael (2011): On the Shoulders of Idiots: Re-thinking Science Communication
as ‘Event’, Science as Culture, 20:3, 283-306