Abstract
Museums are places in which representations are performed and consumed in everyday practice, pushing museum professionals to address issues of subjectivity and identity especially in ethnographic and post-colonial contexts, while archaeological ones have been slower in elaborating these issues, remaining therefore understudied. In the last twenty years archaeological representation has been established as a research specialization that focuses on non-academic representations of the past and the way in which they are received by the public. Taking Etruscan archaeology as a highly promising case study, this proposal examines museum representations of the Etruscan civilisation both from an academic and an audience-centred perspective to understand the way in which meaning on this subject is constructed in the collective imaginary. Using a transdisciplinary methodology, the data gathering process will involve archival research in museums and semi-structured interviews that will be carried out with museum professionals and members of the public. Questions will be asked to understand what messages archaeologists communicate through museum displays and what is understood by the visitors. The phenomenology of museum representation lays at the heart of this research together with the idea that the epistemological practice of museums display can create ideas and data that not only shape the popular perception of the past, but also feed back into academia, picturing knowledge as an exchange between erudite studies and popular culture.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
KEYWORDS
Representation, Museum Archaeology, Etruscology, Knowledge, Meaning-making, Popular Culture, Identity
