Acknowledgement

Through the journey from loose ideas, to concepts, discussions, projects and texts, I have been supported in various stages by many people who have shown up and given their time and competence to qualify my projects and the manuscript of this book. First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to Associate Professor Lisa Gjedde, who was involved in projects that led to our book Researching Experiences (2008). Associate Professor and art historian Anne Hejlskov Larsen and I co-edited the anthology Ny dansk museologi [New Danish Museology] (2005) and we have also jointly run the museological network in Denmark. She accompanied me at the ARoS Art Museum (Chapter 5).

With my colleague PhD Nana Quistgaard, I ran a project at the Danish Experimentarium and published an article in the journal Nordic Museology about learning in the science centre (Chapter 12).

I want to thank Associate Professor Hans Dam Christensen and Professor Helene Illeris for fruitful discussions in our network of visual culture in relation to exhibitions and museums.

I would also like to thank Professor Søren Kjørup, with whom I have visited and discussed many museums and exhibitions as well as planned and given many courses on exhibition experiences and analysis at Roskilde University.

For the last three years I have served on the steering committee of an extensive project about learning [1] and the use of digital social media in relation to various museums. I am grateful to the head of the project, Professor Kirsten Drother, for involving me.  I want to especially thank Professor Kim Christian Schrøder for his support and our discussions in various difficult stages in the process of this project and in the final writing process.

I also want to thank the hundreds of students who have participated in workshops and seminars at Roskilde University and the more than sixty people who gave their time and attention to various qualitative reception projects.

I would like to express my gratitude to Nancy Aaen for transforming my non-native English into a more readable English.

A few of the chapters in this book were published before, in a nearly unaltered form, and many others have been rewritten from Danish to English. Chapters 3, 4, 12, 22 were previously published in Nordic Museology. In the section on the possibilities of exhibitions, Chapter 8 appeared in Udstillinger mellem focus og flimmer [Exhibition between Focus and Flicker] (2006). Chapters 6 and 13 were published in Danish in the anthology called Visuel Kultur – viden, liv, politik [Visual Culture: Knowledge, Life, Politics]. Chapter 2, which covers a local historical museum exhibition and the construction of the model-user, derives from our book Ny dansk museologi [New Danish Museology].

Two chapters have appeared earlier in English, namely chapter 15, in an anthology called Design Research: Synergies from Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2010), and chapter 24, in Researching Experiences (2008). Minor parts of many various projects performed over more than a decade have previously been published and are duly cited in the references in the book.

Most of the visuals are by the author, with other contributors mentioned individually in the captions. I want to thank the art museum AroS for permission to photograph in the exhibition (chapter 5).