From preservation to entertainment: Accounting for the transformation of participation in Italian state museums

Abstract

This study investigates the evolution of performance measures in Italian state museums, alongside the evolution of their role from preservation institutes to entertainment sites, remodelling themselves as participatory museums of the digital era. Italian autonomous state museums, and in particular four of these museums, were chosen as the main field of analysis because this category of state museums was affected the most by the move from the participatory to the entertainment model through successive reforms. Results underlined a renewed role for entertainment, which acted as a mediator between the notion of enjoyment and that of knowledge; the primary importance of the measure about the number of visitors, which assumed different nuances along the years; and the double function of digital technologies in entertaining visitors and providing new sources of measurement.