From museum at the amusement park: opportunities and risks of eduvertissement (original) (raw)

Visiting and Learning: The Museum Becomes Immersive

Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2020

The mission to collect significant and valuable objects and to preserve them in a specially dedicated place, assumes various and different characteristics over the centuries. Nowadays the museum, from a privileged place of conservation and exhibition, is increasingly establishing itself as a powerful medium of social communication and commercial and tourist enhancement.

Expanding the Museum Space: Innovative Programming & Audience Development

2021

This dissertation was written as part of the MA in Art Law and Arts Management at the International Hellenic University (2019-2021). It aims to add to the vibrant scholarly discussion regarding the role of museums and relevant cultural organisations in our day, by highlighting the means through which said institutions can expand their space and subsequently 'develop' their audiences. By way of introduction, the paper renders a brief historical account on the museum, tracing its evolution to date. Drawing from the rich literature on the subject, it then sets out to investigate the multi-faceted concepts of the museum 'product' and 'experience', in order to pinpoint the marketing and programming practices need to be embraced by organisations to reinforce their status as the public's primary space of encounter with the Arts & Culture. The dissertation explores a wide range of topics and debates related to museum theory (museology) and practice (museography), such as museum accessibility, education, tradition vs. innovation, etc. With a special focus on the Arts scene of the Greek capital, the paper also presents valuable insights from museum professionals of the Athenian cultural sector, as well as primary research findings from a museum visitor survey. Based on the aforementioned methodologies, this dissertation intends to indicate the most prevalent fields of museum work, which shall play a pivotal role in the redefinition of museum space in the 21st century. Written amidst the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the paper invites museum practitioners to imagine a trans-cultural future of museal institutions, in the hope of inspiring new standards and models for inclusive and engaging museum experiences.

Public memories and private tastes: The shifting definitions of museums and their visitors in the UK

Museum Management and Curatorship, 2006

There is no doubt that museums now operate in a distinctly different market to those of the past. Rottenberg [Rottenberg, B. (2002). Museums, information and the public sphere. Museum International, 54(4), 21–28] identifies the two major trends in museums in the latter years of the 20th century as being ‘the prevalence of a new market-orientated ideology that stressed the importance of revenue generation’ and ‘the introduction of new technologies that transfixed not only the museum profession, but also the world’. The main impact, which these and other changes have had is the revision of the museum into a setting for recreational experiences [Foley, M. and McPherson, G. (2000). Museums as leisure. International Journal of Heritage Studies 16(2), 161–174; Stephen, A. (2001). The contemporary museum and leisure: Recreation as a museum function. MuseumManagement and Curatorship 19(3), 297–308], rather than an educative one. This paper attempts to address some of these shifts in ideology and purpose.The main concern that museums face as they become more ‘recreation-focused’ is that they will lose what has long been believed to be their ‘integrity’, and thus stray from their original missions to preserve and educate, with critics suggesting that they may simply become arenas for pleasure rather than education.This paper concludes that in future, it seems inevitable that museums will become ‘hybrid places, combining recreation and learning, allowing visitors diversions from the intense stimuli of strolling through galleries and viewing multitudinous objects’ [Kotler, N. (2004). New ways of experiencing culture: the role of museums and marketing implications. Museum Management and Curatorship, 19(4), 417–425], with entertainment and education working together to fulfil the museum's mission. Museums need not be afraid of using entertainment, but should embrace it as a tool for learning, potentially attracting a wider and more diversified public.

The Eye of the Beholder Museology, Museums and Contemporary Presentation

2010

Too many museums are floundering under decreasing attendance and increasing commercialization. One very important way to address these ills is to reconsider museum presentation, specifically exhibitions and the visitor experience therein. Central to this reworking of museum presentation is the acceptance of the primacy of the visitor and her community: museums mount exhibitions to educate and entertain the visitor, to enrich and enlarge the person, even to change society. To fire the imagination and stimulate social change, museums must reconsider the nature of the architecture of their galleries; they must engage much more fully with their communities; they must transform the content of their exhibitions; they must rethink exhibition design and they must pay attention to learning systems. If these demanding modifications are made, I believe museums will become much more relevant and pleasurable. _________________________________________________________________ What do museum visitors want and how can museums give it to them? i What are museums for? What is the museum"s role in society? The rather ugly term edutainment has been coined to describe a blend of education and entertainment that many museums around the world serve up to their loyal visitors. The term underlines the dual nature of much museum presentation, a somewhat schizophrenic mixture of informal education and attempted fun. But how is each done and is it successful? This paper will argue that museums have great potential to educate their visitors in a relaxed social setting, but to do so a number of changes must be made, including establishing a new link with community, developing a greater understanding of what are important issues, concentrating on collaboration and undertaking a serious study of learning systems. We are all too familiar with museums where there seems to be more staff than visitors, where the halls echo with the isolated footsteps of quiet patrons peering into dark cases exhibiting the permanent collection. With the exception of the very major international museums, small attendance seems to be all too common. Many museums only come alive when the blockbuster arrives in town, that highly commercial, touring show accompanied by merchandise for sale in the museum shop, merchandise which some visitors consider as important and as interesting as the artifacts in the galleries. Add this to the glitzy opening and the fancy restaurant, and we see the commercialization of museums in full swing where it can seem that substance is outweighed by style. There is a trap here: the sad reality is that often the blockbuster and the commercialism are needed to fund all the other programming.

MUSEUMS IN THE LIFE OF THE PUBLIC

The present paper aims to emphasize how, in the latest years, more and more events and museum practices focus on the identification of new ways of engaging more individuals into the museum life, even exploring the possibility to extend and adapt the museum activities in the life of communities, according to the actual realities. In this regard we selected a number of relevant institutions in the field (museums, cultural forums etc.) and analyzed their innovative museum practices regarding the visitors and their engagement into the life of the museum. The results revealed that to attract more visitors and to increase public engagement, a museum must to be as a living entity who adapts its needs to the present cultural, economic, social, educational and technological context.

The power of the senses. New trends in heritage tourism

Englishes, 52, pp. 47-76, 2014

The increasing attention in tourism to the sensory and emotional aspects reflects the profound cultural transformations of postmodernity, especially in the societies most influenced by the Western patterns of consumption. This attention involves a new hybrid and relative concept of authenticity, more oriented to emotions and experiences than to contents and material aspects. This change entails effects that appear to be particularly significant in cultural tourism and, particularly, in archaeological tourism: tactile and sensory museums, light and olfactory installations, practices of living history and experiential archaeology. These and other activities of consumption and leisure, aimed at recovering a supposed historical and territorial authenticity and characterized by forms of historical theming, are profoundly transforming our relationship with heritage and the past. Also the spreading of festivals of living history is tied to this new tourism mostly based on emotions. These innovative processes of construction of individual and collective identity entail complex interaction between re-enactors, tourists and local community; strategies of tourist and territorial marketing; and a new use of heritage. At the same time, however, we can single out some salient features of the change in course: consolidation of forms of leisure, tourism and cultural fruition intertwining education and entertainment; increasing loss of historical knowledge; growing need of territorial and historical authenticity; larger acceptance of new forms of relative authenticity.

When the museum becomes the message for participating audiences

This article aims to analyse the notion of participation in the museum context using an audience studies perspective. Museums are increasingly competing for the attention of the public in the arenas of leisure and education, the process of which is part of the commercialisation of the museum institution. In addition, a turn towards interactivity is taking place in museums, and while that might serve well to revitalise the museum and bring it closer to its audiences, it does not sufficiently support realisation of the change of the museum institution into a laboratory-type museum (de Varine, 1988, van Mensch, 2005) -a concept defined through the communicative and democratic aspects of the museum. As is the case with many public institutions, the democratisation of society is increasing the need for transparency and accountability, which in turn has brought public engagement to the attention of the museum. According to , museums need to find a balance between the activities of the museum and audiences: the (potential) need to overcome the shyness of expertise combined with the need to organise the (potential) flood of amateurs.