Moving Figures (on Changing Backgrounds)

On the background of a changing contemporary space-time scenario, the places of learning par excellence, such as museums and libraries, seem to have lost their status as motionless strongholds in the urban landscape. No longer exclusively devoted to contemplating art, or isolated places for reflection and intellectual analysis, museums and libraries have become open places where people meet and exchange ideas, contact zones of contemporary culture. This chapter considers the players who animate those environments. They are not users in the traditional sense, but rather protagonists, who are changing those places according to their needs and experiences. Partakers of the erratic movement that, for various reasons, crosses modern global societies, they are ¬ like “moving figures” who metaphorically find asylum or a ¬ temporary “cultural home” in libraries and museums.