Throughout its consolidation as an academic discipline, museum studies have tended to gravitate around large national and international museums, their emblematic collections, and the management models they have established as the norm. These spaces, mostly located in urban centers and supported by solid structures of funding, research, and public outreach, have shaped a “canon” that influences not only academic agendas but also collective perceptions of what a museum is (and what it should be). 

However, beyond this centralized focus lies a vast and heterogeneous museum universe that has historically remained on the margins of scientific discourse and cultural policies. Small archaeological, ecclesiastical, communal, and local museums, ethnographic and anthropological museums, and medium-sized collections, often located in peripheral or rural areas, constitute the largest segment of the museum landscape today. Far from being residual spaces, these museums hold a heritage deeply linked to the communities that sustain them and to the social, cultural, and symbolic environments from which they emerge. 

The relative “marginality” of these institutions is not only geographical or budgetary, but also epistemological. Their practices, challenges, and potential have been scarcely examined by academia, despite directly addressing central issues for the contemporary museum: sustainability, community participation, intergenerational transmission of heritage, management of limited resources, professionalization in precarious contexts, and the redefinition of its social function in the 21st century. In these spaces, the museum presents itself as an active agent of cultural mediation, living memory, and identity construction that transcends the vision of a mere monumental object container 

The international conference Museums Beyond the Beaten Track. Challenges from the Periphery, Communities and Local Heritage, organized by students and teachers from Master's Degree in Museums Curation at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, is born by the will to shift the gaze and open a space for critical discussion on these these often-overlooked museums. It is proposed as an interdisciplinary and intergenerational meeting forum where researchers, professionals and cultural agents can share experiences, methodologies and theoretical frameworks that allow reconsidering the role of museums from the edges.

https://eventos.urjc.es/go/museosalmargen