The Conditions of Visitorhood: Reimagining Absence, Access, and Belonging in Museums

ABSTRACT

Despite decades of policy commitment to inclusion, access, and audience development, participation in museums remains deeply unequal. This paper addresses the systemic issues associated with audience segmentation, with particular attention to the conceptualization of the “non‐visitor.” It argues that segmentation frameworks do not simply describe audiences. They also construct imagined publics and establish normative assumptions about who belongs in museum spaces. When used as explanations rather than starting points for inquiry, these frameworks can shift responsibility for nonparticipation from institutions to audiences, treating “low engagement” as an inherent characteristic of particular groups rather than as an outcome of the ways museums define, recognize, and reward participation. Drawing on critical museum studies, cultural sociology, QuantCrit, DisCrit, and postcolonial theory, the paper redefines the non‐visitor as someone for whom museum visiting has not become possible, recognizable or sustainable under existing institutional conditions. It proposes visitorhood as a relational framework for examining how museum spaces, narratives, classificatory practices, and behavioral norms shape participation and belonging. It also outlines a methodological approach that treats non‐visiting as a diagnostic signal of misalignment. Museums must move beyond asking who is missing and instead examine what forms of visitorhood their practices currently make possible.