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Abstract
Grounded in the post-structural theories of Gilles Deleuze, this post qualitative dissertation examined rural adult populations’ possibilities for access to art museums. Thinking with Deleuzian and Deleuzoguattarian concepts such as external relations, encounter, and difference, the study investigated the contingent and complicated relations that exist at the intersections of rural populations and art museums. To set aside preconceived notions of rurality, the study began by deterritorializing the definition of rural by disentangling it from existing definitions based on an urban-centered lexicon. Building on this effort, fieldwork destabilized existing perceptions of rural by examining perceptions of accessibility and the relevance of art museums for rural adult populations in the Ozark region of Northwest Arkansas, home to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, located in Bentonville, Arkansas. Fieldwork involved traveling among rural communities and interacting with their adult residents. In the dissertation, the encountered relations experienced by the author in both the rural communities and the museum are presented in a journal entry format, with each entry followed by a “thinking through” of the encounter with theory to understand what relations and concepts were at play. What emerged was the presence of an ontological divide between rural populations and museums that is grounded in a misunderstanding of rural communities, their residents, and their complexities, all of which serve to alienate rural residents. The dissertation concludes by recommending that museums and their staff work towards dismantling hierarchies (both internal and external) and deterritorialize museums in order to become-non-museum and become-rural.