Planning the Reconception, 1939–1941

The resolution to a deep-revolutionary museum crisis involves the impacted museum making requisite, legitimate organisational change. This is with the aim of restoring any previously lost legitimacy. Where the disconnect is substantial, the response will most likely amount to an institutional reinvention. Each instance of museum institutional reinvention necessitates a clear conception about what the necessary change comprises, before any practical action can be taken. This process has been termed herein as undergoing ‘conceptual reinvention’. The current chapter uses the case of the Imperial War Museum during the Second World War and its work averting post-war cultural irrelevancy—specifically its actions and transactions towards conceptualising its post-war raison d’être and rationale—to demonstrate the process. The chapter theorises and instantiates conceptual reinvention. It shows that undergoing a conceptual reinvention is essential for the successful realisation of institutional reinvention more broadly. It also shows that conceptual reinvention can be subject to influence by external forces, especially where those forces have interest in some particular outcome.