Interdisciplinary Exhibitions and the Production of Knowledge: Perspectives from Curatorial Practice

How can exhibitions not only stage existing knowledge, but also raise questions that might eventually lead to new research? This question has become ever more relevant due to the museum sector’s growing interest in the development of thematic exhibitions that combine narratives and objects from art, science, cultural history, and everyday life. Using theories from interdisciplinarity studies, Henriette Pleiger identifies different ways of producing knowledge during the exhibition-making process, as well as the mechanisms that are necessary for an exhibition to be considered interdisciplinary. The development of such exhibitions can be understood as collaborative research processes.

Henriette Pleiger has been working as an exhibition curator at Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Bonn, Germany, since 2002. In this position she has curated and organized several large temporary exhibitions often combining art, cultural history and science. She earned her PhD in museum practice at the Institute for Cultural Practices of the University of Manchester, UK.