Framing the Machine: Curatorial Perspectives on AI and the Role of the Contemporary Museum

Sammanfattning

This thesis investigates the way that the development of artificial intelligence is affecting art museums in Scandinavia. The central focus of this research lies on the role of the museum in responding to and guiding the societal conversation surrounding AI. The questions we asked are: 1) How have museums adapted their practice to the availability of AI tools? 2) What is museums’ curatorial staff’s perception of AI-generated art and its place in the museum? 3) How do museums’ curatorial staff understand the responsibility of the museum in guiding the discussion around generative AI? We conducted semi-structured interviews with curatorial staff at four different museums in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The interviews were analysed through a framework that combines new museology and Kate Crawford’s criticism of AI. We conclude that Scandinavian museums are at different stages when it comes to incorporating AI in their practice, and that there is a noticeable difference between larger and smaller institutions. Additionally, we could see that curatorial staff at these museums recognise the significance of implementing and approaching AI in a careful and ethical manner. It stood out that the extent to which museums incorporate AI into their practice relies on the individual staff members’ motivation and knowledge, possibly due to a lack of standardised guidelines. This study expands the knowledge of how museums are responding to the arrival of automation tools in their museum practice, and specifically contributes to this field of research by focusing on curators’ responses and concentrating on a Scandinavian context.