Designing Liquid Heritage: How Hybrid Museum Experiences Shape Co-Created Cultural Value

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed modern art museums to fundamentally reconsider their relationship with audiences, reshaping how they communicate, engage, and build shared cultural value. This paper looks at how hybrid configurations can assist the formation of a fluid, co-created layer of cultural meaning created by the interactions between visitors and institutions, and extends beyond the physical form of collections: the liquid heritage. This study proposes liquid heritage as an evolving, relational cultural process and therefore offers a design-centered view for conceptualizing and facilitating co-creation in post-COVID museum environments. This paper uses a comparative design-led methodology across museums in Europe, Asia and North America to understand how hybrid experiences are developed; how certain technologies and spatial arrangements are employed; and how they encourage interpretation, participation and shared authorship in contemporary art settings. By analyzing communication patterns, participatory interfaces and selected case studies this study will provide insight into how hybrid encounters can generate relational forms of value, which may be invisible or unrecognized within traditional museal frameworks.

Keywords: Liquid Heritage, Liquid Modernity, Hybrid Museum Experience, Participatory Heritage, Co-creation, Cultural Memory, Museum Digital Transformation, Institutional Governance

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1007733