Museum gallery interpretation and material culture

Museum Gallery Interpretation and Material Culture publishes the proceedings of the first annual Sackler Centre for Arts Education conference at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. The conference launched the annual series by addressing the question of how gallery interpretation design and management can help museum visitors learn about art and material culture. The book features a range of papers by leading academics, museum learning professionals, graduate researchers and curators from Europe, the USA and Canada.

The papers present diverse new research and practice in the field, and open up debate about the role, design and process of exhibition interpretation in museums, art galleries and historic sites. The authors represent both academics and practitioners, and are affiliated with high quality institutions of broad geographical scope. The result is a strong, consistent representation of current thinking across the theory, methodology and practice of interpretation design for learning in museums.

• List of Figures p. ix
• List of Tables p. xi
• 1 Introduction p. 1 Juliette Fritsch
• Part I Situating Interpretation in the Museum Context
• 2 "The Museum as a Social Instrument": A Democratic Conception of Museum Education p. 13 George E. Hein
• 3 Invoking the Muse: The Purposes and Processes of Communicative Action in Museums p. 26 Paulette M. McManus
• 4 Interpretation and the Art Museum: Between the Familiar and the Unfamiliar p. 35 Cheryl Meszaros and Twyla Gibson and Jennifer Carter
• Part II The Role of Interpretation in Art Galleries
• 5 Toward Some Cartographic Understandings of Art Interpretation in Museums p. 53 Christopher Whitehead
• 6 Art for Whose Sake? p. 67 Sue Latimer
• 7 The Seeing Eye: The Seeing "I" p. 80 Sylvia Lahav
• Part III Language and Museum Interpretation
• 8 How Can We Define the Role of Language in Museum Interpretation? p. 97 Juliette Fritsch
• Part IV Interpretation, Personal Experience and Memory
• 9 "I loved it dearly": Recalling Personal Memories of Dress in the Museum p. 109 Torunn Kjølberg
• 10 Welcome to My World: Personal Narrative and Historic House Interpretation p. 123 Mariruth Leftwich
• 11 Narrative Museum, Museum of Voices: Displaying Rural Culture in the Museo della Mezzadria Senese, Italy p. 136 Marzia Minore
• Part V Evidence-Based Practice
• 12 An Evaluation of Object-Centered Approaches to Interpretation at the British Museum p. 153 David Francis and Steve Slack and Claire Edwards
• 13 The Other Side of the Coin: Audience Consultation and the Interpretation of Numismatic Collections p. 165 Effrosyni Nomikou
• Part VI Interpretive Strategies for Specific Audiences
• 14 Designing Effective Interpretation for Contemporary Family Visitors to Art Museums and Galleries: A Reflection of Associated Problems and Issues p. 179 Patricia Sterry
• 15 Interactive Gallery Interpretation for Design Students: Help or Hindrance? p. 191 Elizabeth Dyson
• 16 Empower the Audience! How Art Museums Can Become Enriching Creative Spaces for a Wider Audience through Deliberate and Strategic Use of Experience and Learning Theories p. 204 Karen Crøn
• Part VII Process and People
• 17 "Reading the Walls": A Study of Curatorial Expectation and Visitor Perception p. 221 Sarah Ganz Blythe and Barbara Palley
• 18 "Education is a department isn't it?": Perceptions of Education, Learning and Interpretation in Exhibition Development p. 234 Juliette Fritsch
• Appendices p. 249
• Contributors p. 253
• Index p. 255