Challenging the Western Museum

Museums Journal Takeover 2026 | Museum X × Culture&

Five years of Museum X. An international conversation about the future of museums.

What might museums become if we questioned the ideas, structures and traditions that have shaped them?

In 2026, Museum X joined forces with Culture& to guest-edit Challenging the Western Museum, the September/October takeover edition of Museums Journal, published by the Museums Association.

Bringing together artists, writers, researchers, activists and cultural practitioners from across the UK and internationally, the edition explores new approaches to museums, collections, public memory and cultural practice.

From Greenwich to Barbados, Rwanda, Trinidad and Tobago, Scotland and Argentina, contributors offer different perspectives on heritage, cultural authority, restitution, climate justice, public art, digital futures and community knowledge.

Their approaches do not always agree. That is part of what makes the conversation valuable.

Together, they invite us to consider how museums might respond to the social, ethical and environmental questions of our time.

Five years of Museum X. Still asking questions.

Museum X began in 2021 with an ambition to rethink how museums are imagined and made.

Our Black British Museum Project emerged from a series of questions.

What if we began with people before deciding on a building or a collection? Whose histories and knowledge would shape the museum? What might become possible through collaboration with communities, artists, researchers and cultural organisations?

Five years on, those questions continue to inform Museum X's work.

Through research, creative commissions, partnerships and experimentation, we have developed approaches that connect Black British and African diasporic histories with living memory, cultural knowledge and new ways of working.

The Museums Journal takeover provided an opportunity to extend those conversations internationally, bringing Museum X's practice into dialogue with others exploring different cultural traditions and approaches to museum-making.

It also marks a significant moment in the ongoing development of the Black British Museum Project.

The project continues to challenge us to think about what a Black British museum could be, who might shape it and how it might connect histories and experiences across the world.

Museum X × Culture&: Reimagining museums together

Our collaboration with Culture& grew from a shared interest in questioning inherited museum structures and exploring the possibilities of experimental cultural practice.

Led by Dr Errol Francis, Culture& has developed a significant body of work challenging established approaches to cultural participation, representation and institutional authority.

Its Reimagining Museums programme, developed through the Wellcome-funded ANTITHESES research platform with the University of Oxford, explores ethical disagreements and contested questions in museum practice.

Working with Dr Chloe Asker and collaborators, the programme considers how creative experimentation and dialogue can support new approaches to difficult ethical questions.

For Museum X, the collaboration connects with our own interest in the relationships between museums, Black histories, descendant communities, ethical research and cultural responsibility.

Our practices come from different places, but share a commitment to experimentation, collaborative enquiry and imagining more equitable cultural futures.

The takeover created an opportunity to bring these interests together through the voices and experiences of contributors working across different contexts.

Different places. Different histories. Shared possibilities.

The edition introduces readers to cultural practices and perspectives that extend beyond conventional definitions of the museum.

Across its pages, contributors explore how histories are collected, interpreted, contested, preserved and shared.

Their work raises questions about who holds cultural authority, the responsibilities institutions inherit through their collections, and the knowledge and practices that exist beyond established museum structures.

Some contributors work within museums and archives. Others develop their practice through independent cultural organisations, community initiatives, artistic research and activism.

Together, they demonstrate the breadth of thinking and experimentation taking place across the cultural sector internationally.

What connects these contributions is a willingness to question familiar assumptions and remain open to different possibilities.

A conversation, not a manifesto

In our joint editorial, Sandra Shakespeare and Dr Errol Francis reflect on the value of bringing contrasting ideas and experiences into conversation.

“What follows is not a manifesto, it is a conversation.”

Sandra Shakespeare and Dr Errol Francis, Guest Editors

The edition creates space for productive disagreement, critical reflection and collective imagination.

It also asks how museums might learn from the creative and intellectual work taking place within communities and independent cultural organisations.

How can institutions support these practices and relationships over time?

How might different forms of knowledge influence decision-making?

And what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to be changed by the people and ideas we encounter?

These questions continue to shape Museum X's work and our wider collaborations.

Celebrating the takeover at the Museum of Homelessness

On 21 October 2026, we celebrated the publication of Challenging the Western Museum with a special gathering at the Museum of Homelessness in London's Finsbury Park.

The event brought together contributors, colleagues from the Museums Association, cultural practitioners, friends and collaborators.

The Museum of Homelessness provided a particularly meaningful setting for the occasion.

Its work, shaped through lived experience, collective action and community knowledge, offers a compelling example of how museums can challenge established relationships between institutions and the people whose histories they represent.

In their contribution to the edition, the Museum of Homelessness reflects on love as a source of strength, drawing on the revolutionary love ethic of bell hooks.

This speaks to an important thread running through the takeover: the significance of care, solidarity, accountability and the relationships through which cultural practice becomes possible.

The evening was an opportunity to celebrate the people behind the publication, reconnect with colleagues and begin new conversations about what might come next.

What comes next?

For Museum X, the takeover marks a moment of reflection and renewed possibility.

Five years into our journey, we continue to explore how museums, archives and heritage can be shaped through relationships, creative practice and shared cultural knowledge.

The Black British Museum Project remains central to that ambition, alongside collaborations that test new approaches to research, interpretation, community participation and institutional learning.

We hope Challenging the Western Museum encourages readers to discover the work of its contributors, explore ideas that may be unfamiliar, and carry some of these conversations into their own practice.

There is much to learn from the different ways museums are being imagined and created around the world.

Five years of Museum X. Still asking questions. Still experimenting. Still imagining possibilities together.

Contributors and acknowledgements

Challenging the Western Museum was guest-edited by Museum X and Culture&, in collaboration with the Museums Association and Museums Journal editorial team.

Guest Editors: Sandra Shakespeare, Museum X, and Dr Errol Francis, Culture&.

We extend our thanks to every contributor, artist, writer, researcher and practitioner whose work shaped this edition.

We are grateful to the Museum of Homelessness for hosting our launch celebration, and to the Museum X team, colleagues, partners and supporters who joined us.

The edition reflects the generosity, creativity and critical thinking of an international community of people committed to exploring what museums might become.