Museum as a Learning Organization: The Power of the Museum Exhibition and New Organizational Knowledge

Abstract

This article is a presentation of the results of research on the exhibition named The Power of the Museum, which took place at the National Museum in Krakow in 2020/2021. The exhibition became, for the authors, a case study conducted using the methodology of humanistic management. The aim of the analysis undertaken in the text is to show the museum and its employees as a learning organization in the situation of introducing an innovation, which was an exhibition organized in an innovative way for the institution. The authors focused on describing the new fields of knowledge activated in the team, including the education department, i.e., the curators of The Power of the Museum exhibition, the conservators, or the curators employed in this position. Mapping the implementation of new knowledge was also an important part of the research. The authors were interested in systemic and informal standards in the perception and use of educators' competences. They also addressed the problem of the formation of informal relationships and the generation of institutional trust in the exhibition implementation process. The authors adopted a perspective in which they were interested in the process of exhibition making, the shifts of responsibilities between museum departments, and, as a result, the creation of new individual, organizational, and systemic knowledge. With this optic, the article answers the research question of how to structurally open up exhibition work to continuous learning, not only at the level of the subject matter but of the exhibition staging process itself. In this respect, it is an innovative view not only from the perspective of the management of a museum institution but also fits into the broader field of museological reflection.