Decolonisation as difficulty – dialogic analysis and institutional practice

This article examines the persistently unresolved challenges of decolonising Australian cultural institutions through a case study of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery (QVMAG) in Launceston, Tasmania. Despite growing scholarly advocacy for inclusivity, repatriation, and cultural sovereignty, museum decolonisation efforts remain uneven and fraught. Drawing on two years of community and staff perspectives (2020–2022), this study interrogates the socio-cultural tensions and institutional dynamics that complicate progress. It argues that decolonisation is not a linear trajectory, but an iterative process marked by friction, where genuine transformation depends on redistributing decision-making power and embracing inclusive, participatory practices. Bakhtin’s theoretical framework, Dialogic Imagination, offers critical insight into this process, revealing how institutional voices, silences and disruptions can serve as fertile sites for contested meaning-making, where alternative voices inevitably arise, and challenge dominant narratives and momentarily reconfigure power through messy, non-linear acts of cultural reckoning.