What some major hermeneutic theorists contribute to museum interpretation
Hermeneutics comes from the name for the Greek god, Hermes, whose mythological responsibility was to bring messages from the gods to humans and vice versa. In that sense, Hermes served as the interpreter between the two realms. Hermeneutic theory has developed from its roots in theology to a “universal method of cultural and social understanding” (Davey) by which interpretation is thought to lead to understanding, to an existential hermeneutics by which understanding is thought to lead to interpretation. More recently an applied hermeneutics has developed which connects to the way interpretation could be grounded for the museum. What follows is a summary of a few major hermeneuticists and their contribution to the field. For each theorist, I have included a brief statement about how their ideas remain important for me when I am creating a new museum exhibit that involves multiple historical or cultural perspectives. Johann Martin Chladenius lived in the early eighteenth ce...