“Museums as Play” or why theater studies is essential to understanding contemporary historiography and museums as they intersect with digital technologies and culture.

The full title of this piece from the data praxis series of the “dh+lib” site is “Museum as Play: Iteration, Interactivity, and the Human Experience.” It’s a conversation between Thomas Padilla and Sebastian Chan about museums and their use of digital technologies in creating interactive experiences in museum and historical collections. This is a frequently recurring topic among museum curators. As I’ve written previously, the 2015 meeting of Museum Next last April prompted observations of the museum as theater last spring.

This conversation extends this nexus of history, digital technology, and interactive experiences (performances?) among museum guests. It’s well worth the read.