Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture

ISBN-13: 9780415086325 / Angielski / Twarda / 2000 / 216 str.

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

Opis

This study focuses on objects and meaning in the museum. How do museum visitors interpret the collections they see on display and how are these interpretations influenced by the pedagogic approach taken by the museum? Questions about the character of visual narratives, cultural difference and the construction of identities present the museum as part of cultural politics. A new museum idea - the post-museum - is about to transform the familiar modernist museum. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill explores specific objects and collections in detail: the founding collections at the National Portrait Gallery, London; Hinemihi, a Maori meeting house in Surrey; the Maori collections and the books of Makereti (Margaret Staples-Brown) and of Merton Russell-Cotes; and the Lakota Ghost Dance Shirt, found formerly in Glasgow Museums. The construction of meaning from material objects is discussed in relation to individual interpretative processes and also to interpretative communities.

Spis treści

1 Culture and meaning in the museum 2 Picturing the ancestors and imagining the nation: the collections of the first decade of the National Portrait Gallery London 3 Speaking for herself? Hinemihi and her discourses, 4 Words and things: constructing narratives, constructing the self, 5 Objects and interpretive processes, 6 Exhinitions and interpretation: museum pedagogy and cultural change, 7 The rebirth of the museum.

O autorze

Eilean Hooper-Greenhill has taught in schools, colleges, museums and galleries. She has been lecturing in the Department of Museum Studies, University of Leicester since 1980 and took over as Head of Department in 1996. Her principle publications are Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge (Routledge, 1992), Museums and their Visitors (Routledge, 1994) and her edited collections are Museum, Media, Message (Routledge, 1995) and The Educational Role of Museums, 2nd Edition (Routledge, 1999).