Practical Questions to Inform Planning a New, Hermeneutics-Inspired Museum Exhibit
I use eight questions when planning a new museum exhibit to maximize its potential to serve as a hermeneutically-informed interpretive space where both the visitors and the museum can expect to have a transformative conversation from which each will emerge with, and be able to articulate an expanded, more nuanced or even different understanding? These questions were developed from my professional experience as the executive director, for nearly seven years, of the Bolduc House Museum in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. More recently, I submitted these practice-based ideas and commitments to academic literature in museology and cultural theory during my doctoral studies and research at the University of Leicester. 1) What is the purpose of the exhibit and of each artifact or other resource to be included in the exhibit? Make sure to state this without using educational terms. Do not say that the visitor will learn, discover or understand something. Inste...