Exploring Digitisation and Diversity in Museums: A case study of Rotterdam

The thesis deals with exploring the relationship between diversity of audiences and the advent of digital innovation in museums. Museums have the reputation for being elite and exclusive institutions that originate from colonial thought. Diversity and inclusivity debates in museums have been widely discussed and policies focusing on audience development have been introduced. Nevertheless, the museum institution persists to possess a rather unifocal understanding of diversity and inclusivity curbing the true effect of the established policies. The application of policy frameworks regarding diversity lacks practicality in the real world. In this day and age of digital innovation, the museum sector has been slow in engaging itself with the digital realm and recognising opportunities for future museum practices. The pandemic accelerated the process of digitisation revealing its advantages of wider outreach and broadened visibility. With the introduction of social media channels and digital enhancement tools, a possible increase in audience engagement was predicted. In this backdrop of diversity struggles and the recent digital innovation, this thesis attempts to explore the link between digital strategies and the diversity of audiences in museums in Rotterdam, specifically Boijmans Depot and Kunstinstituut Melly. Using the qualitative interviews as the main methodology and pairing it with secondary data analysis and nested survey research, the study delves deeper in understanding the motivations and experiences of museum professionals and visitors on diversity of audience in age and ethnicity to explore its relationship with the adopted digital strategy. Results reveal that the understanding of diversity in museum professionals influenced their digital strategy during and after the pandemic. Challenges such accessibility, limited racial representation and inclusivity have not been addressed in the digital strategy which create new exclusions beside the pre-existing old exclusions. Digital approaches need to have more focused curatorial practices and a comprehensive in-depth analysis of digital limitations should be prioritized going forward.