There is a long history of art museums being used as sites of protest. As spaces of past, present and future meaning, they represent ideal locations for people to try to shape the present and the future. From peaceful demonstrations to terrorist attacks, the current risks of violent protest to art museums is high. Motivated by political, cultural, social and religious reasons, these protests can range from those that specifically target art objects within the art museums, to others that use the locations as stages on which to protest. The paper begins by considering why art museums attract so many protests. It then examines contemporary and historical case studies in Brazil and the UK to help our understanding of the challenges that these protests pose to art museums and the people tasked with the security of objects within them.

While art museums still convey and reinforce ideologies and shape how societies see themselves and are viewed by others, they also provide ‘battlegrounds’ to challenge dominant discourses (Dubin, 2008). These ‘battlegrounds’ are parts of ‘culture wars’ (Hunter, 1991; Sepulveda dos Santos, 2003). Hunter (1991) articulates these wars as being the fights between the ‘impulse towards orthodoxy’ from ‘the impulse toward progressivism’ (Hunter, 1991: 42-3). The two case studies chosen by the author are examples through which to analyse these ‘culture wars’.

The first case study in Brazil in 2017 highlights how museums can be used as ‘sites of persuasion’ (Dubin, 2008) to challenge a popular progressive discourse promulgating a secular, free, open version of society in order to try to impose a populistic, conservative and moralistic discourse as the dominant narrative for Brazil’s currently polarised society. Sepulveda dos Santos (2003) highlights the role of art museums in increasing the ‘plural and fragmented process of identity formation’ (Sepulveda dos Santos, 2003:42). As locations of identity building, over the last thirty years many art museums in Brazil have not been forming a single collective identity but, instead, have been offering the possibility that cultural ownership can be shared and that identity can be explored rather than imposed. The actors in the protests in 2017 were very aware of the significance of the locations’ role in this identity building and understood that to control art museums can enable them to shape and impose how the ‘community’ is represented and be able to heavily influence this community’s ‘truths’ and ‘values’ (Dubin, 2008). The second case study in the UK in 1913/4 shows how actors in protests can use art museums as the locations of ‘sites of persuasion’ to challenge dominant discourses and affect change in the ‘community’s’ ‘truths’ and ‘values’. In this case study, the dominant discourse was about women and society. In contrast to the first case study, the protesters in the UK in 1913/4 were proposing a freer, more open and more equal society. Their goal was to achieve the right for women to vote. The fact that the case study which was fighting for a progressive future occurred over 100 years ago and the one trying to curtail freedom happened last year highlights how important art museums have been within the contestation of power in the past and present.

The paper also considers possible risks and potential reactions to these types of protests in the future. It proposes that as sites of persuasion, people involved in the management of art museums must have more awareness of the threats the sites face from violent protests. It argues that typical situational crime prevention approaches are insufficient when dealing with the threat of violent protest and argues for a crime prevention approach that includes more awareness of the meanings that art museums can have for societies. Lastly, the paper finishes by arguing that although protests can be highly problematic for people involved with art museums, the ongoing appeal of these spaces as sites of protest signifies the importance of art museums as locations of cultural meaning.