After visiting hundreds of museums across Alberta, Lianne McTavish
chronicles some of the most challenging and unexpected sites where the
idea of the museum is being reshaped. The concept of the visit as a
"voluntary detour" encapsulates the way visitors travel along backroads
to find small-town and rural museums, as well as the agreement to turn
away from standard museum scripts when they arrive. Addressing themes of
place, land, colonization, rurality, heritage, childhood, and play,
McTavish reveals the museum visitor as multifaceted, with locals and
tourists often interpreting museums very differently. Case studies
include the World Famous Gopher Hole Museum, Fort Chipewyan Bicentennial
Museum, Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park, and the Museum of Fear and
Wonder. A key chapter analyzing sites devoted to resource extraction
explores how these places promote settler colonial understandings of
land use. By contrast, Indigenous museums and cultural centres defy
colonial messages in displays that adapt and refuse conventional museum
formats. Honouring local, rural, and Indigenous knowledge, Voluntary
Detours enriches critical accounts of the past, present, and future of
museums.