Museum as Academy: Research Practices at Copenhagen’s Medical Museion

Museums have always supported learning and inquiry, but the last twenty years have seen a flourishing of reinvented university museums, following a period of neglect. This paper is grounded in the case of Medical Museion at the University of Copenhagen, which experiments with relations between research and museum practice, and what this can tell us about contemporary knowledge-making in general. We draw on multiple thinkers to build an image of a ‘museum method’ that invites playful circling, imaginative leaps, boundary-crossing, and serendipitous collaborations centered on encounters between objects and diverse visitors. Our case is exemplified through four key aspects of ‘research in public:’ the use of historical collections; bringing PhDs into museum work; contributing to scientific culture; and artist collaborations.