Other Encounters with the Museum

Participatory workshop, initially developed in 2019.

A participatory workshop that exploring the diverse ways that feelings, sexuality, and identity shape the way we encounter art works. The workshop involves both discussion and practical experiments, including the use of navigational scores that imagines ways of moving through the museum informed by each participant’s erotic impulses, lived experience of violence and discrimination, and past experiences of spectatorship.


The workshop was first developed for the Göteborg Konstmuseum, as parallel programming for the G19 Swedish Conference for Gender Studies, for which Nemer also gave a keynote presentation with scholar Jennifer Evans.


Participants enacted a series of scores developed by Nemer based on his research into audio guides, engaging with artworks in the museum collection based on themes of gazing, touching, and listening.



The exercises were followed by discussions about participants’ experiences and impressions, building on this new knowledge to inform future approaches to art spectatorship. While originally designed for the Konstmuseum, the workshop material and navigation scores are highly adaptable, and have since been presented to students from the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design at the McManus Gallery in Dundee, Scotland.