Interpretation: A Search for the Raisin at the End of the Museum's Hot Dog
Students in museum theory at the University of Iceland will be visiting the East Iceland Maritime Museum this semester to make recommendations about interpreting some new permanent exhibits. I have been invited to give a video lecture and PowerPoint presentation in conjunction with their project. So, today I have been thinking about what my experience directing an 18th century French colonial site in Missouri allows me to bring to the maritime museum table in Iceland.
The invitation is to discuss how a museum's philosophical approach to interpretation impacts its role, goals, priorities and authority as an educational institution. Based on what I did at the Bolduc House Museum and the research I did for my PhD dissertation at the University of Leicester, I reached the conviction that museums must adopt a philosophical approach to museum interpretation. It is my opinion that a museum's interpretive commitments, values and priorities serve as the primary driver for its operations, collections management, visitor services, interpretive educational programming and development. It informs every decision the museum makes: what is on exhibit, marketing choices, staffing choices, programming choices and events.
My point of view is unusual because museum interpretation started as a professional practice long before museum studies (museology) was an academic discipline. While there is a theoretical approach to interpretation, hermeneutics, that has developed over many hundreds of years in theology, jurisprudence, and more recently, phenomenology, according to museologist, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, "interpretation is very loosely defined in the museum context." Instead, museums have conflated interpretation with an educational mission and identity designed to, also according to Hooper-Greenhill "construct and communicate meaning" for the visitor. She distinguishes between what hermeneutics and museums understand about interpretation this way: "In the museum, interpretation is done for you or to you. In hermeneutics, however, you are the interpreter for yourself."
In the next several posts, I will explore the implications to any museum of adopting a hermeneutics-inspired philosophical approach to interpretation. I plan to discuss what hermeneutics is and what problems it might address for the museum. I will bring some examples that illustrate how an interpretive philosophy rooted in education may create difficulties for some of the visitors. I will argue that hermeneutics permits the museum to open a space in which meaning is not fixed and where an iterative, reflexive, dialogic, emergent definition of truth is assumed. These posts may ground a discussion of the components of a museum's philosophic approach to interpretation: commitments, identity, authority, priorities, strategies and tactics. To borrow from an Icelandic proverb, we are in search of the raisin on the end of the museum's hot dog.
Image source - http://www.officedns.co.uk/portal/img/rm_img/blog_img/443/template-item-10/rm-image-1/hotdog.png
By Lesley Barker c. 2017
The invitation is to discuss how a museum's philosophical approach to interpretation impacts its role, goals, priorities and authority as an educational institution. Based on what I did at the Bolduc House Museum and the research I did for my PhD dissertation at the University of Leicester, I reached the conviction that museums must adopt a philosophical approach to museum interpretation. It is my opinion that a museum's interpretive commitments, values and priorities serve as the primary driver for its operations, collections management, visitor services, interpretive educational programming and development. It informs every decision the museum makes: what is on exhibit, marketing choices, staffing choices, programming choices and events.
My point of view is unusual because museum interpretation started as a professional practice long before museum studies (museology) was an academic discipline. While there is a theoretical approach to interpretation, hermeneutics, that has developed over many hundreds of years in theology, jurisprudence, and more recently, phenomenology, according to museologist, Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, "interpretation is very loosely defined in the museum context." Instead, museums have conflated interpretation with an educational mission and identity designed to, also according to Hooper-Greenhill "construct and communicate meaning" for the visitor. She distinguishes between what hermeneutics and museums understand about interpretation this way: "In the museum, interpretation is done for you or to you. In hermeneutics, however, you are the interpreter for yourself."
In the next several posts, I will explore the implications to any museum of adopting a hermeneutics-inspired philosophical approach to interpretation. I plan to discuss what hermeneutics is and what problems it might address for the museum. I will bring some examples that illustrate how an interpretive philosophy rooted in education may create difficulties for some of the visitors. I will argue that hermeneutics permits the museum to open a space in which meaning is not fixed and where an iterative, reflexive, dialogic, emergent definition of truth is assumed. These posts may ground a discussion of the components of a museum's philosophic approach to interpretation: commitments, identity, authority, priorities, strategies and tactics. To borrow from an Icelandic proverb, we are in search of the raisin on the end of the museum's hot dog.
Works Cited
Hooper-Greenhill, Eilean, 2000. Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture. Oxion, New York: Routledge.Image source - http://www.officedns.co.uk/portal/img/rm_img/blog_img/443/template-item-10/rm-image-1/hotdog.png
By Lesley Barker c. 2017
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