Museum’s role in society has been emphasized with the idea of time of crisis.
Recently, we can find that museums have tried to engage actively in social problems,
including contentious disputes and controversies, and to realize social justice. This
literature intended to shed light on those activities of museums with the concept of
museum activism. Museum activism is a sort of attempt to reestablish self-identity of
museum fundamentally as an activist or an actor to change society better, requiring that
museums should have more ethical stance toward social problems for future ever than
before. I tried to reconstruct the theoretical and practical genealogy of museum
activism by centering on now ongoing discussions and practices, and to contribute to
discuss on alternative future of museums. Especially, this literature started from
investigating the concept of ‘forum’ emerged as an alternative institutional place for
museum as temple in the 1970s when the discourse of museum’s crisis had been
regarded as deeply related with the crisis of period, and then, tried to trace and
examine some varied theoretical․practical genealogies of museum activism as a
process to internalize, reorganize, vitalize, and radicalize such concept of forum.