Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture

by Eilean Hooper-Greenhill

This is a multi-disciplinary study that adopts an innovative and original approach to a highly topical question, that of meaning-making in museums, focusing its attention on pedagogy and visual culture.

This work explores such questions as: This stimulating book provokes debate and discussion on these topics and puts forward the idea of a new museum - the post-museum, which will challenge the familiar modernist museum. A must for students and professionals in the field.

Genres: Museums, Museology, Nonfiction, Reference, Art, Art History, History

216 pages, Paperback

First published October 25, 2000

Reviews

[Ava · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had to read chapter 5 & 6 for uni, but I'm 'free to read the rest of this very interesting book'. Yeah, no way in hell.

Maybe I need to accept that I'm too stupid for this book. Maybe its abstraction is too confusing for me and only the Great Philosophical Minds can grasp its concepts.
I just don't get the purpose of this book. It outlines? some things that have changed between the modernist and the postmodernist museum. The modernist museum was factual and made no difference between visitors, the postmodernist museum is plural and accepts that no meaning is fixed. I can deal with that. I cannot deal with the same mantra 'meaning is contextual' every two paragraphs.
There is too little structure and too much listing phenomena in museum world in a non-comprehensive way, definitions are thrown around, it's that and that guy in communication and media studies (I don't give a fuck about that anyway; I study art history I don't want anything to do with it) have defined this concept, guess how they defined it? We must understand concept A as PLURAL NON-FIXED RELATIVE TO CULTURAL BACKGROUND.
I also found the appeal to make exhibitions meaningful a bit limited; I understand that you can make interesting contemporary exhibitions or historical exhibitions about problematic concepts using objects in a different way; imagine an exhibition about slavery and thus placing objects like silverware in a different context, not esthetical but as slave-made etc. Okay, that raises awareness. But what to do with paintings or objects that do not have this 'problematic' framework? Do I need to make one up? Can I just enjoy a painting? The book - at least the two chapters - do not address that.
The chapters I read take up 50 pages or so. It took me 4-5 hours to read! I'm completely stuck in academic language!

Concluding, I hated this book. However, it might be an excellent treatise on how to re-establish museums as places of cultural dialogue or whatever. I guess I'm just to shallow to get it.


remark: I guess as an art history student I can't just yell 'I don't want to deal with media studies' as it is apparently some necessary aspect of the museum world. I just fucking hate it.

also this had to be my 100th review. Way to spoil my anniversary.

[tirill svaler · Rating 3 out of 5]

a highly interesting book, but hooper-greenhill does what i always do when i try to explain something: she goes on for pages where there could be merely a paragraph, and she repeats herself often which for some is probably helpful, but for me it made me want to not read the book at all. i still did, though, because the rest of the overall writing style was very good and the contents of the book both interesting and important.

[Jasmine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had to read chapters 1, 4, 5 and 6 for university and will not be reading more on my own account. Although it's somewhat interesting, it's tiring to read because the author just repeats the same simple information over and over and over again (how many times do I have to read that different people have different interpretations of an artwork depending on their background and life experiences? - I know! I get it! You don't need to repeat it every two sentences!) and goes on for pages and pages about something that could be easily conveyed in a couple of sentences. I felt it was quite limited in terms of the visual culture it was referencing and I just overall didn't really feel like I learnt that much.

[Giulietta · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished the chapters I need to read for Curating Cultures. It is an interesting approach to Museumology, however, it is very informative and descriptive and sometimes it can be too much.

[Candy Wood]

Through examples drawn mostly from art galleries and ethnographic collections, Hooper-Greenhill shows how the “modernist” museum based on a model of transmitting knowledge is inadequate from either a learning theory or a cultural theory perspective. While her 2007 book focuses on museum pedagogy and its results, this earlier one poses more basic questions about how visual objects acquire meanings. Instead of perpetuating unjust power relations, she argues, museums should be places where visitors can examine and perhaps revise their own cultural assumptions. In the “post-museum,” she suggests, museum professionals will pay more attention to the intended audience for displays and labels. Black and white photographs provide a visual record of some of the objects discussed.

[Inge · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for everyone in museum-land.

[Tosca Wijns-Van Eeden · Rating 2 out of 5]

Although very interesting, it mainly focuses on indidginous cultures vs western cultures with a few exceptions. Very limited range of visual culture.