This paper will discuss some ideas on learning and "understanding" in a communicative process, particularly attached to objects in a museum setting. I will analyse our object relations and the idea of engagement, participation and collaboration in museums. A starting point is, on the one hand, today's individualization of society, with self-performative action as a result. On the other hand there is a "radical group-forming" tendency that goes along with new communication technologies that has created an "architecture" of participation. Museums have responded to these new tendencies in society in a variety of ways. I will bring up some hermeneutical aspects to the "visitor business" and "learning" and point out the social and phenomenological origin of identity, thought and cognition. I will take a look at the identity of the "radical" individual on the one hand and of the institution on the other, and point at out some unsolved museological and paradigmatic problems as forin the interaction between these two. Finally, I will discuss the very much overlooked question how institutions think, and work?