Twelfth International Conference on The Inclusive Museum

Abstract

The paper examines what constitutes a readable museum space conceptually and pays attention to aspects of visibility/invisibility and access/exclusion of visitors (and employees). Consequently, the paper is both a conceptual and a methodological project. The object of study is not the exhibition as a text to be read by the visitor, but concerns how a museum can be read in its totality to call attention to the prevailing conditions at public institution. More specifically, the concern is the visual representation of museum spaces in communication with the public, for example on websites. First, the focus on visual representations of social realities in the images provides insights that do not rely on visitor numbers or underlying assumptions. Instead, the examination of a visual repository and the problematization of selection processes and interpretations offer an opportunity to understand what constitutes the museum visitor and what the implications of this are. Second, the methodological approach of this project also addresses the question of inequality and access. It includes both images selected by the institution and images that I have photographed. I employ a communicative perspective based on the claim that language, symbols and the ways in which we communicate constructs and shapes realities in constitutive ways (Sanders,Koschman,&Isbell, 2015). I supplement the question of how to read a museum by asking what the assumptions are of who will be visible and in what ways, by problematizing the museum’s and my own choice of images, and contextualizing the depictions to aid my interpretation.