Are museums and galleries palaces of things, or resorts for people? When I was a museum studies student in Leicester in the 1990s, this was the almost endlessly debated question.
A satisfactory, if unexciting, conclusion that we often reached held that the two were inseparable - people in museums could best be reached through things.
But I am now convinced that a third factor also needs consideration: the value of the knowledge that museums and galleries generate and sustain. I also firmly believe that the sector's intellectual and cultural vibrancy can reliably be measured through the quality of its exhibitions and live events.
These are bold claims, and I am keen to use my current affiliation with the Museums Association as a research associate to investigate both their validity and the implications they have for what museums and galleries actively do.
There are, of course, a number of well-worn arguments that justify the resources poured into exhibitions and events. They represent a vital imperative to retrieve material from storage, excavate its stories, and put it on show.
They also give curators creative opportunities to take an innovative approach to their collections, to collaborate with other staff, and to forge partnerships with external individuals and institutions.
Cumulatively these reasons provide compelling strategic cause for museums to make short-term shows. But lying behind these merely instrumental arguments is a more powerful one that provides its own justification.
Exhibitions and events highlight the vital character of museums and galleries as spaces where ideas are actually minted - where thinking goes on "in public".
This has been essential to the museum project since its invention in the Renaissance. From then on, the best of our museums have done far more than just broadcast ideas created privately.
They have been places that highlight and then unleash for public scrutiny new knowledge about objects and collections, but also about the spaces between collecting areas.
This might sound rather abstract, but it is an idea that leads to a variety of questions with very direct bearing on what happens in museums. The first set relate to the effectiveness with which exhibitions and events are undertaken.
I have been struck by how unselfconscious we seem to be about our work as exhibition and event makers - the worlds of fine and particularly contemporary art being notable exceptions.
I find it puzzling, for example, that up until recently we had an annual prize for the best exhibition catalogue, but not one for the best show, or curator, or public programme.
And in a profession with so many sub-groupings (educators and directors, conservators, designers and marketers, and curators of every imaginable discipline), it seems odd that we lack a network that draws together, from across the disciplines, those who curate exhibitions and events.
Also, as a manager of some extraordinarily innovative and inventive curators, I am not sure where the next generation of them will come from: where they will gain their tuition and training, and how they can develop their skills and thinking.
I am also keen to research some fundamental aspects of what is involved in putting on museum shows. Four strike me as worth investigating: the work of curators, the use of space, the role of exhibits and the significance of the audience.
So I am interested in how the role of some curators of collections has evolved into exhibition producers. What now lies at the heart of their creative practice? Can their skills be learned, or are they essentially innate?
I also want to investigate the role of architectural space. Good exhibitions manage to be well paced, but not predictable; comfortable, effectively lit and legible but still dramatic; informative, involving and experiential. I plan to talk to exhibition designers and others about how exhibitions can be made good and exciting places to be in.
The most considered elements of exhibitions are the exhibits themselves. But whereas material culture studies have told us much generically about the significance of objects held by museums and galleries, much less attention has been paid to the special meaning given to objects as exhibits.
Finally, I am interested in the role of audiences. By definition, public knowledge is pretty meaningless without the public. But who should temporary exhibitions and live shows be aimed at, and should visitors actively be involved in the generation and flow of exhibition ideas, rather than just passively soaking them up?
I have a gut conviction that I want to test out: that museums can significantly up their game by taking more seriously their dual role as vibrant parts of show business and as creators of new public understanding.
Ken Arnold is the head of public programmes at the Wellcome Collection. He is also a Museums Association research associate
