No Museum is an Island

Museums, often conceptualized as isolated entities, are better understood through multi-sited ethnographic research that captures the nuanced workings of organizational life beyond their physical boundaries. This study introduces a novel methodology to avoid 'methodological containerism,' which treats museums as static containers without considering the dynamic processes, informal relations, and uncodified activities that define them. By analyzing organigrams from three sub-projects on Berlin's Museum Island—focusing on exhibition-making in the Museum of Islamic Art, the Ethnological Museum, and a new Humboldt Forum exhibition—the research demonstrates how organizational structures are fluidly 'done' or 'achieved.' This approach provides deeper insights into museum operations and broader implications for organization studies.

Macdonald, S., Gerbich, C., & Von Oswald, M. (2018). No Museum is an Island. Humboldt-Universität Zu Berlin. https://doi.org/10.18452/21677