James Smithson bequeathed his fortune in 1826 to establish a research institution whose mission is “the increase and diffusion of knowledge”. His vision is now realized in the world's largest museum complex, with 19 museums and 9 research centres, and no less than 137 million objects.

The mandate for outreach (“the diffusion of knowledge”) fits an accepted model for museums: that we are running institutions with an educational purpose. Even if we accept the what and the why of this premise, we can still question the how. I would like us to think about a shift from a paradigm of “objectivity” to a model of emotional engagement – a move from education to provocation.

A favoured narrative in talking about the Origins of Museums is to trace a lineage from the cathedral treasury of the Middle Ages to the cabinets of curiosities of the Renaissance and the Baroque, to the Enlightenment model of the universal museum. This developmental schema covers more than a millennium of what we have, with hindsight, called “museums”. The narrative obscures, though, the very different epistemological frameworks that characterized different eras – frameworks David L. Martin divides into the regime of wonderment, the regime of curiosity and the regime of enlightenment. Our current museum culture emerges out of enlightenment ideals and methodologies.

The effect of the enlightenment was to move us from belief to verification; from the search for the hidden links and sympathies between the dissimilar to compendious classifications of the similar; from analogy to analysis.

Previous traditions of collecting emphasized not the similar but the dissimilar, the odd, the freak. Now our natural histories, and our art histories are cleansed of the abnormal. The result, sorry to say, is decorum. It is that decorum I would like to challenge.

Our museum decorum operates via a veil of objectivity and through strategies of neutrality. This neutrality is expressed in the passionless language of our labels – little wonder that in the US basic labels are often referred to as tombstones. Dead words for dead things. The neutrality is also implicit in the passionless settings. For many of us the preferred setting has for many years been the white cube. Neutral, passionless. And purportedly objective, in contrast to the high moralizing of so many 19th-century museums, which were festooned with statues of great exemplars, with frescoes and with epigrams. Our preference is to remove anything extraneous. Little wonder Brian Doherty likened the white cube to a tomb. In the last half century, then, we have created in our museums a physical and intellectual construct that is more deadening than we recognize. There is a self-imposed decorum, where passion and even humour are transgressions.

Let me ask: is this decorum of neutrality at odds with our desire to engage a broader public, a public that is undergoing profound change? We are in the throes of a pivotal shift in the relationship between “authority” and “alternative voices.” We are in a blogging and tweeting world in which everyone has an opinion, and in a Wiki world in which there are no central authorities. These changes undermine the status quo, and we are witnessing a growing tension between “formally taught expertise” and “experience-based expertise.” This is about a change in the control of information, and the means of its dissemination. This could just result in noise, to a Tower of Babel where there was cacophony, not communication. Alternatively, it could lead from didacticism to dialogue.

BUT, and it is a big BUT, are we as Directors, we as Curators prepared to relinquish authority? Are we prepared to be honest and make it plain that museum collections are a selective construct, museum display an artificial process. The whole thing is contrived. This is not an imprint of the past, but a form of theatre.

Let us, therefore, start adopting strategies from the world of the theatre: let us replace an institutionalized anonymity by a list of credits, as we do in films and theatre. Let us identify the “auteur” of an exhibition, and his or her team – the curator, the designer, the editor, the director. This is a means of acknowledging that the museum display is not a predetermined process, but a selective vision crafted by personalities. Museums can then be viewed not as places that impart disembodied, static information, but as stages for ever-changing interpretation.

I would also like to propose that we stop privileging the systematic. Let us begin instead to indulge the sensory. There can be great beauty in a sense of order, but sometimes we need to let senses preside over sense.

Think of a museum and you think object / objectivity. I have been arguing that this “objectivity” is in many respects an illusion, and that we need to be more transparent about the artifice of our profession. I have argued this in the name of intellectual honesty, but it opens up the possibility of a new engagement with the audience. The theatre metaphor provides a challenge to start using dramatic devices to heighten emotional response. It is this emotional appeal that takes us back to where we started: education.

Neuroscience is teaching us is that human beings the world over have the same emotional architecture. Cultural manifestations may change but the underlying emotional processes are the same everywhere. The heart is called by a different name in China but it beats to love and slows to sorrow in exactly the way it does in America. Neuroscience also teaches us that if we wish people to engage with what we offer, we have to engage them emotionally. Strong emotions facilitate memory. Important memories stir emotions. Emotions and memories shape motivations, which are drivers to engage in behavior such as learning. In summary, I am saying that we should

• be more open about our role in choosing the stories and the selections in our museums. We should think about adopting the “auteur” convention from the theatre.

• not allow ourselves to weighed down by the decorum of neutrality of the last century of museum display.

• not be afraid of passion.

• take a lesson from theatre which often engages a broader range of senses.

• not model ourselves as teaching institutions but as learning institutions.

Because learning will be incited, exploration encouraged, when we engage emotions, let us move from education as an obligation, to learning as a thrill. In a single phrase, let us think less about objectivity and more about subjectivity.