Going Radical in Museum Space? Inclusive Strategies That Challenge the Institution’s Core

In 2016, the Salzburg Museum integrated Easy-to-Read text panels in their exhibition spaces – a novelty within Austria’s museum landscape. The initial reactions were split, ranging from people who declared it a powerful innovation for an inclusive museum to others that sniffed at the strongly simplified ‘stupid’ text versions. Based on these ambivalent reactions, the project "Say it Simple. Say it Out Loud" – a collaboration between Salzburg Museum and the University of Salzburg – took a two-fold approach to explore this radical gesture of (new) visitor-orientation. First, a sociological analysis through hermeneutic discourse analysis, participant observation and qualitative visitor interviews: How do different people use and value these Easy- to-Read texts in the exhibition space? Second, a specifically developed language course within the exhibition "Tell Me About Salzburg!" for German learners at level A2. Being visitor-oriented not only towards the core cultural audience but towards people with different socio-cultural backgrounds and language levels, the museum becomes a highly-contested site. The study consequently shows the difficulties of hegemonic power structures of institutions as well as the transformative potential of inclusive museum and language strategies, which proposes a basic rethinking of the grounds of ‘hospitality’ within museum strategy.