MUSEUM EVALUATION AS A PRACTICE OF EDUCATION TO COMPLEXITY AND SOCIAL INCLUSION

Museums have now overt relevance for the purposes of social inclusion, thanks to the widespread and determined international action of systemic promotion of programs and strategies of cultural interpretation and mediation for numerous types of categories of citizens at risk (people with disabilities, refugees, asylum seekers, immigrants, prisoners, LGBTQ+ community, low-income or unemployed people, people from proving cultural contexts etc ...). But the relationship between museums and users is of highly complex nature: both for the intrinsic specificity of each museum, characterized by unique peculiarities for what concerns the place, the context, the policy and the staff, and for its audience, where each person can visit and participate in a specific way. Strategies imagined for target categories of people could be adapted and personalized for any individuals that share the same fundamental matrix. In this contribution, we propose to transpose the Reggio Emilia Approach, born in the context of children's education, to the museum context, especially as regards to the practice of documentation and the analysis of social matrixes. Firstly, as an understanding of the unconscious levels that intertwine at the foundation of the nature and purpose of museums; secondly as a shared recognition of the inclusive potential of the museum; and finally, as a self-assessment and process evaluation, for the construction of meanings, the education to complexity and the implementation of democratic practices of participation. Such reflections generate new visions and interpretations of the museum’s functions, and as such perpetuate the creative activity celebrated in the same institution. Museums become a place of hermeneutic and epistemological interpretation, their collections and the proposed itineraries take on a key role in learning to ask questions not only for the users but also for all those who want to be part of the process, grasping looks, possibilities, and understandings.