The Participatory Turn in Museum Curation as a Model for Person-centred Clinical Care

Abstract

Abstract The participatory turn in museum curation offers a powerful model for person-centred clinical care. The first section gives an outline of contemporary person-centred care focusing on the contested values arising (particularly but not only in mental health) from shared clinical decision-making between clinician and patient. The section then outlines the growing range of philosophical resources available for tackling contested values of this kind. With notable exceptions, aesthetics has to date been largely absent from these resources. The next section describes the participatory turn in museums curating and illustrates it with a museum-based project involving refugee migrants, The Silent University. This is an example of what the curator Maria Lind (2019, 2020, 2021) has characterized as ‘curating in the extended field’. The final section combines the considerations of the first two sections by exploring some of the features of the participatory turn that make it a powerful model for person-centred care. First and foremost in this regard are partnership working and dialogue. Interpreted through the philosopher, Hilde Hein’s (2006), agentic account of the participatory turn, these features point to the need for a similarly agentic understanding of shared clinical decision-making. Further features of the participatory turn important for person-centred care, particularly in mental health, include its focus on strengths. Interpreted within Lind’s concept of ‘curation in the extended field’, recovery in mental health can be described as ‘recovery in the extended field’. We conclude with brief comments on the wider significance of aesthetics in contemporary science-based and person-centred clinical care.