Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Visitors pervade this volume, as they do – with varying frequency – museums. Other parts of the Companion highlight a wide range of forms of interaction between museums and their visitors, publics, communities, or customers – the language chosen being indicative of the kind of relationship sought. These range from the relatively exclusive through the predominantly paternalistic to the more interactive and inclusive. The previous parts of the Companion have made clear that there have been widespread – though never all-encompassing – shifts in museum–visitor relationships over time. In particular, contributors have drawn attention to the fact that many museums have come to give greater priority to the envisaged needs or desires of potential audiences in planning their exhibitions, and that, increasingly, they conceptualize “their public” as plural. Part III provided further discussion of this transforming visitor emphasis and considered some of the ways in which museums attempt to “speak to” and even shape those who visit via a range of mainly non-verbal forms of address, such as visual technologies and spatial layout. In Part IV, these matters are explored through a focus on visitor experience in museums and especially in relation to questions of learning and education, broadly understood. While the ways in which visitors interact with museums cannot be confined to learning and ... log in or subscribe to read full text