The following text was written by Dr. Friederike Landau-Donnelly following the workshop “Understanding Conflicts – Strengthening Resilience”, which she conducted on September 29, 2025, at the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum.
Poetic Intro: Forest of Conflicts
The forest of conflicts is full of trees.
Or: Conflicts are like a forest full of trees.
Or: Museums are like trees that are standing in a social forest full of conflicts.
How do museums navigate through this thicket of conflicts? Where are the roots of conflicts, how and when do these value-laden roots get inflamed? What (and who) nourishes conflicts? Is there such thing as sustainable caring for conflicts that will never fully vanish?
Introduction: Navigating Conflicts
Museums face a multitude of conflicts: over objects whose presence in the museum space is controversial, over funding for the realization of exhibitions and programs, over degrees of internationality, multilingualism, accessibility, or the lack thereof, over admission prices, public restrooms, and opening hours. However, as we know, “the museum” is made up of different people and positions that together turn the museum into the place that visitors can experience. Accordingly, when I refer to “the museum” in the following, I mean a conflictual plurality of voices, opinions, capacities, and approaches that co-constitute the museum.
Conflicts in and about the museum are perceived differently and are conditioned by varying approaches to decision-making, power, and privilege. Conflicts feel different depending on one’s own positionality. For museum makers, whether at management level, as temporary curators, educators, or mediators, or even security and technical staff, conflicts are present in the museum: How does the museum behave in its heterogeneity when there are conflicts of use over museum space, the collection or the archive/depot? How does the museum relate to its (g)local neighborhood? What does the museum do when restrictions and attacks on freedom of art and expression turn the museum into a political place? To what extent does the museum present itself as a place of socio-political discussion and controversy?
The Conflictual Consensus Matrix [CoCoMax]
In order to constructively and resiliently deal with the diverse conflicts that affect cultural institutions such as museums, I have developed the so-called Conflictual Consensus Matrix [CoCoMax]. The matrix is intended to provide guidance on how to navigate conflicts in the above-mentioned “thicket” between resources and values. In short, CoCoMax offers an analytical tool for identifying, naming, and, in some cases, strategically separating conflicts of various kinds. To this end, I introduce the terms resource conflicts (e.g., over space, time, money, and people/personnel) and value conflicts (e.g., over identity, representation, history, justice). For museum professionals, CoCoMax is intended to be a communicative aid to become (more) articulate about conflicts or to be able to discuss and see conflicts better. CoCoMax can help with the following questions:
- What exactly is the conflict about (e.g., one or multiple resources)?
- Do all parties involved in the conflict perceive the resources and values at hand as a conflict?
- Which values are affected or violated by “our” conflict?
- Which scarce resources create conflicts that can also reveal differences in values?
- What is the relationship between conflicts over values and conflicts over resources? Can one type of conflict be alleviated while the other type of conflict remains painful?
The Conflictual Consensus Matrix thus attempts to make the interconnections between concrete, identifiable conflicts and more abstract, implicit conflicts tangible. CoCoMax offers an approach for discussing different conflicts in more transparent ways. The “life cycle” of conflicts is however never linear or completely circular; it rather “wobbles” back and forth between different manifestations of resources and values. Since access to and references to conflicts are never evenly distributed historically, physically, spatially, and cognitively, it is important to think about these unequal scopes for action in and around conflicts in a way that is sensitive to power and diversity.
Conflictual Consensus Matrix [CoCoMax]
The following scenarios are illustrative examples intended to clarify the primary lines of conflict in KoKoMax, while other resources and/or values may also be relevant.
All images designed by Alexandra Papademetriou
Scenario 1: The reduction of public funding due to austerity measures (resources: money, space) for a diaspora-led project space leads to a discussion about group-specific cultural offerings, their prioritization, and marginalization (values: justice, identity).
Scenario 2: A source community shaped by European imperialist colonialism in Africa (values: identity, agency, history) requests the return of objects looted by former colonizers (resources: money, people).
Scenario 3: A museum’s opening hours are reduced due to staff shortages (resources: personnel, time), raising the question of who the museum is actually accessible to (values: identity, agency).
Conflictual Consensus Matrix [CoCoMax]
Museum employees encounter conflicts on a daily basis: for example, when homeless people want to use the museum foyer to warm up, charge their cell phones, or sleep; or in curatorial conflicts over how potentially controversial or misunderstandable artistic content can be displayed and contextualized. Furthermore, conflicts can arise on social media that are time-sensitive and manifest themselves in the moderation of controversial comments (or lack/failure of moderation). When planning exhibitions with curators and artists from abroad, different understandings of artistic freedom or terms such as censorship or anti-Semitism may come to the fore. CoCoMax can provide a basis for discussion in the event of uneven/controversial resource allocation between permanent and temporary exhibitions to identify which and how many resources are made available for which type of exhibition. In the museum context, resource conflicts also raise the specific issue of objects — which objects are exhibited, displayed, restored — and which ones are not on display? If the lack of time or space to display or return controversial objects is not neutral, which value-based assumptions, priorities and feelings at play (e.g., political will, skepticism, pride, shame, etc.)? Which values are at stake — attempts at the recognition of historical wrongdoing or epistemic violence, reparation, or even an apology? Classifying which aspect of a conflict is most important can help to get a handle on a multi-faceted conflict.
Outlook
It has become clear that museums are arenas for implicit and explicit assessments of constructed normalities, which may be selective and problematic (e.g., Eurocentric or (neo)colonial). Conflicts of a more implicit nature often surface over explicit resources. The point of entry into a conflict therefore plays an important role: conflictual dynamics play out differently when disputes initially arise over resources such as time, space, or money, and then, deeper-seated differences such as belonging or a sense of (in)justice come to the surface.
The conflict-oriented perspective of CoCoMax can raise questions for the future of museums for museum employees from different levels of decision-making:
- What might a conflict-attuned curatorial practice look like?
- How can conflicts be curated on-site and digitally in ways that preserve the right to and respect for the freedom and equality or equity of all?
- How can and do museums want to make internal conflicts as well as those with communities and objects visible (e.g., transparency, accessible archive/depot, multimedia contextualization etc.)?
In sum, CoCoMax can provide opportunities for discussion on these issues in order to make “the museum” socially relevant and resilient as an open training ground for conflict management skills and competence.
Poetic Outro: [Un]Speaking Conflicts
speaking conflicts
performing conflicts
promising conflicts
articulating conflicts
rehearsing conflicts
removing conflictuality from conflicts
breaking conflicts
appeasing conflicts
conflict c(r)amps
Further materials (available only in German)
Another source of inspiration for discussing conflicts and differences can be the so-called Wheel of Power and Privilege.
On the position paper „Kulturpolitik des Konflikts“ by Friederike Landau-Donnelly, published by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung
About the author
Dr. Friederike Landau-Donnelly (1989, she/they) is an intersectional political scientist, urban sociologist, and cultural geographer. They are currently a visiting professor of social and cultural geography at Humboldt University in Berlin. They are also working on a monograph about contentious museums in Canada and India. Friederike writes on artistic and affective activism, spatial theory, public art, and contested cultural policy. Dr. Landau-Donnelly is co-editor of the Handbuch Kulturpolitik (2024), Konfliktuelle Kulturpolitik (2023), and [Un]Grounding – Post-Foundational Geographies (2021), as well as author of Agonistic Articulations in the “Creative” City – On New Actors and Activism in Berlin’s Cultural Politics (2019), and publishes poetry under #PoeticAcademic.