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This article looks at modes of visitor engagement in a music museum setting. As curator for a gallery and collection of European music, I am tasked with representing musical cultures in Europe according to geo-political entity, community group, and genre. I present a case study in which popular music served to connect visitors with display content by instigating interest and creating a sense of personal context for the visitor. By presenting visitors with audio-visual content that was meaningful to them I was able to increase visit length to specific displays. In these cases, I used popular music as a didactic tool to guide visitors towards critical understandings of culture. It allowed me to simply and effectively represent nuances of musical behaviour and concepts of locality, innovation, and fluidity. Findings of the project stimulated thoughts and questions regarding the purposes and methods of representation within musical instruments museum display spaces.Cet article examine les modes sur lesquels les visiteurs s’investissent en contexte muséal consacré à la musique. En tant que conservatrice d’un département muséal consacré à la musique européenne, j’ai pour tâche de représenter les cultures musicales de l’Europe en fonction d’entités géopolitiques, de groupes communautaires et de genre. Je présente une étude de cas dans laquelle la musique populaire a servi à connecter les visiteurs au contenu exposé en suscitant leur intérêt et en créant pour chaque visiteur le sentiment d’un contexte personnel. En présentant aux visiteurs des contenus audiovisuels qui avaient un sens pour eux, j’ai pu prolonger les temps de visite de certaines expositions en particulier. Dans ces cas, j’ai employé la musique populaire comme un outil didactique pour orienter les visiteurs vers une compréhension critique de la culture. Cela m’a permis de simplifier et de représenter efficacement les nuances du comportement musical et les concepts de localisation, d’innovation et de fluidité. Les découvertes permises par ce projet ont stimulé la réflexion et les questions relatives aux finalités et aux méthodes de représentation au sein des espaces muséaux exposant des instruments de musique

This chapter identifies tools that scholarly training brings to collaborative projects, and also identifies aspects of collaborative work that run contrary to the self-defined and self-guided nature of scholarly work. It suggests ways to modify and expand the ethnomusicologists’ toolkit in order to adapt to new forms of collaboration, and therefore thrive in culture and heritage projects and institutions. Public culture and heritage professionals bring a myriad of skill sets and backgrounds to every project. Furthermore, many projects are defined by stakeholder desires and institutional parameters. The culture clash between “self-guided” and “collaborative” requires navigation, adaptation, and reorientation of one’s own approach to work. The chapter uses examples from museum-based projects and operations to reveal the value of “pivoting” and adaptation: why and how professionals should and can do so, and the end result of doing so or not doing so. The lessons can apply to work in a variety of culture and heritage projects and institutions.

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