The museum of the twenty-first century is operating against the backdrop of ongoing social concerns pertaining to climate change, gender inequalities and racial tensions, and often exhibitions become the contact zones where those expressions are formulated. This research analyses how a democratic and inclusive philosophical perspective such as the Tigens Metod (or method of the thing) is executed by museum professionals. In doing so, Stuart Hall’s model of encoding/decoding is applied as the theoretical framework in investigating the process of exhibition production. It is argued that occasionally resistant positions can emerge from the museum’s ideological discourse and that key actors within the museum field yield different codes according to their own framework of knowledge and relations of production. This challenges the basic assumption in Hall’s model that media institutions yield one singular preferred code into the system. Overall, it is argued that an object-oriented democracy has the potential of challenging power structures, albeit still contingent upon the choices made by museum professionals.

With digital presence becoming an increasingly big part of museums, more resources have been put on digital interactions. This thesis studies how Malmö Museums can enforce their digital strategy by taking advantage of the Norwegian method – Tingens Metod (Method of Things), and by renewing their digital presence. Because of the COVID-19 crisis and the technological advancements of the past decade, museums are using digital technologies more than ever before to reach their visitors. By using Tingens Metod, we have been able to show how collaborative digital workshops with different participating groups can open the museum process to be an open dialogue between museum creators and the museum’s visitors. The workshops have led to a democratisation of artefacts, and a new-found appreciation for the conservation that occurs at museums. These workshops have also shown that participants would like to use digital tools and interactions in their exploration of a museum’s wide collection of artefacts. The results of this thesis project have led to the creation of a two-part prototype. First, the Tingens Metod workshops are adapted to become a recurring playtest programme at the museum. Second, an overall renewed digital presence which reimagines the museum’s digital presence in a modern and reimagined way should be available on platforms that visitors are using. Together these two parts form a proposed prototype which can be adapted by Malmö Museums in their continued effort to reach their long-term digital strategy goals.

With digital presence becoming an increasingly big part of museums, more resources have been put on digital interactions. This thesis studies how Malmö Museums can enforce their digital strategy by taking advantage of the Norwegian method – Tingens Metod (Method of Things), and by renewing their digital presence. Because of the COVID-19 crisis and the technological advancements of the past decade, museums are using digital technologies more than ever before to reach their visitors. By using Tingens Metod, we have been able to show how collaborative digital workshops with different participating groups can open the museum process to be an open dialogue between museum creators and the museum’s visitors. The workshops have led to a democratisation of artefacts, and a new-found appreciation for the conservation that occurs at museums. These workshops have also shown that participants would like to use digital tools and interactions in their exploration of a museum’s wide collection of artefacts.The results of this thesis project have led to the creation of a two-part prototype. First, the Tingens Metod workshops are adapted to become a recurring playtest programme at the museum. Second, an overall renewed digital presence which reimagines the museum’s digital presence in a modern and reimagined way should be available on platforms that visitors are using. Together these two parts form a proposed prototype which can be adapted by Malmö Museums in their continued effort to reach their long-term digital strategy goals.