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Abstract This chapter presents a theoretical framework and justification for the volume's broader aim of devising and showcasing critical perspectives on the museum (as an institution) and on museums (as a series of individual specificities and contingencies) from a range of disciplinary and intellectual traditions. We approach this task from the proposition that museum theory cannot be divorced from museum practice, arguing that museums are best understood as sites of “conjuncture” where different disciplines, theoretical approaches, and practices meet. Our starting point is Nicholas Thomas's argument that museums can be understood as a method which is itself generative of theory rather than simply as a site on which to perform theoretical models of analysis. We build on this approach by analyzing the ways in which contributors to this volume have generated new forms of knowledge using museums to think with. Among these approaches are the moves beyond governmentality paradigms toward an understanding of the nondiscursive, affective functions of museums; and a recognition of the role of museums in the production of reflexive forms of knowledge and citizenship formation, as well their activist role in society. We argue, in the final instance, that the field of museums provides an expanded field of vision for those of us interested in following particular theoretical debates, but that it does so precisely because this field is constituted through a series of methodological practices that have and continue to be key to the ways in which disciplines are shaped, public space is understood and produced, subjectivities are shaped, and relations between peoples are enabled. If there was ever any doubt as to the contributions of museums to the formation of culture or their relevance to innovation in both theory and disciplinary practices, we hope our collection goes a long way to demonstrating the value of thinking otherwise.