This project investigates how heritage institutions can achieve inclusion and accessibility within their organization, collection, and exhibition spaces that meets the breadth of demands placed by today’s “critical visitors.” The proposed research program asserts that critical visitors challenge the presumed space of normative heritage, such as the values of collecting and display cultures. Hence, this research program wants to create a new benchmark in the field by acknowledging and accounting for the generative role of critical visitors, employees, and activists in evolving and diversifying museum and archive practices. Fifteen heritage partners collaborate on activities to develop language and tools that dismantle intersecting oppressions, forms of exclusion, and marginalization.

The Critical Visitor consortium partners: Het Nieuwe Instituut, Van Abbemuseum, University of Amsterdam, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Amsterdam University of the Arts, Accessibility Consultant – Wat Telt, Research Centre for Material Culture, IHLIA LGBT+ Heritage, Atria, izi.travel; additional consortium participants: the Amsterdam Museum, Studio i Platform for inclusive culture, Imagine-IC; together with the applicants: Leiden University, Reinwardt Academy Amsterdam and Delft University of Technology.