Abstract

This thesis emerges from the feelings of isolation, confusion and powerlessness related to contemporary urban life and the complexity of the often-incomprehensive mechanisms that shape our cities. The main objective is to propose the outline of a critical mediation strategy for museums and exhibitions in and about the city, that can work towards empowering citizens in seeking their right to the city and spatial justice. The first part begins with an overview of the city museum context, that includes its historical development, and the discourse related to its practice, which focuses on the social role and relevancy of the museum as a dialogical space. Subsequently, the theoretical and methodological framework of this strategy is developed, based on Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy model and enriched with insightful writings on the urban condition by Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey. The mediation framework is further informed by the various interpretations that the right to the city acquired recently inside the city museum context, as well as by the critical spatial perspectives of Edward Soja and Stavros Stavrides. In the second part, the proposed methodological framework is used as an analytical one to study museum and exhibition cases in and about Athens, Bologna and Berlin. This detailed analysis unveils different degrees in which the proposed approach is used in specific existing museum practices, key factors that can determine its implementation, as well as the fact that when critical mediation concepts are applied to the museum itself, it can move closer towards acting as a passage from reflection to action, towards praxis. Alongside the elaborated outline for a critical mediation strategy, the thesis’ contribution “towards city museum as praxis” includes examples of how it can be applied in mediation moments of the analyzed museums that were diagnosed as anti-dialogical, while further research inquiries are also proposed.