Museums and the interpretation of visual culture

the long version

Museums and the Interpretation of Visual Culture focuses on objects and meaning in the museum. How do museum visitors interpret the collections they see on display, and how are these interpretations influenced by the pedagogic approach taken by the museum? Questions about the character of visual narratives, cultural difference and the construction of identities present the museum as part of cultural politics. A new museum idea - the post-museum - is about to transform the familiar modernist museum. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill explores specific objects and collections in detail: the founding collections at the National Portrait Gallery, London; Hinemihi, a Maori meeting house in Surrey; the Maori collections and the books of Makereti (Margaret Staples-Brown) and of Merton Russell-Cotes; and the Lakota Ghost Dance Shirt formerly in Glasgow Museums. The construction of meaning from material things is discussed in relation to individual interpretative processes and also to interpretative communities. Museum pedagogy is analysed, with a transmission approach to exhibition being linked to the modernist museum and a cultural and constructivist approach emerging in the post-museum. -- Publisher description.