Current Research

The museum, the exhibition and the visitors
Meaning making in a new arena for learning and communication

Overview

Museums, like schools, were established as new institutions during the period of emerging nations at the end of the 19th century. At the time, museums, took an active part in the construction of meaning of the exhibits and even of the place itself.

As a consequence, museum epistemologies and identities change. The new demands on museums also affect the modes of exhibitions and which media to use in communication with the visitors, as well as the role of the visitors.

This is the first project of its kind that will look at a range of distinct yet connected aspects of these changes. Our aim is to scrutinize the role and impact of new policies, new technologies and new ways of understanding visitors’ engagement in exhibitions from the perspective of museology, designs for learning and multimodal communication.

The aim of the project

The project aims at investigating central aspects of the contemporary role of the museum in society, in order to develop a coherent perspective of meaning making in exhibitions.

The project will be carried out in three distinct yet closely integrated parts:

1) Museum identities and epistemological orientations: identity and epistemological orientation as conveyed in messages both internally and externally

2) Museum IT Artifacts: media and means of communication used in interactions with the public

3) Reading the museum - forms of visitor ‘engagement’: a focus on the response by the public as seen in aspects of the use made by the audience of these resources and messages

Historical museums in Sweden, England and the US will be investigated.

Participants

The overall project is organized as collaboration between Stockholm Institute of Education (LHS; Staffan Selander, Fredrik Lindstrand and Eva Insulander), London Institute of Education (Gunther Kress and a rsearch officer), Umeå University (Kerstin Smeds and Rickard X), Luleå University (Vaike Fors), University of the Arts, Philadelphia (Slavko Milekic) and Interactive Institute (Halina Gottlieb).

DidaktikDesign at LHS is a new milieu for analysis of designs for learning and multimodal communication, where Kress also is a guest professor. Smeds and Fors have developed new research in the field of museology and perspectives on learning at museums respectively. Gottlieb and Milekic have been actively engaged in the development of interactive applications for different museums for the past ten years. Milekic has also been involved in software (programming) and hardware development aspects of museum IT artifacts.