Museum Theory. Группа авторов
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How, for example, could an incised and colorfully enameled bowl be best displayed so that visitors might appreciate not only its beauty and good condition, the detail of its decoration, and its status as a vessel, but also the hue and dull sheen of the metal, its coolness to the touch, the contrast in texture (though both are smooth) between the copper alloy of the bowl and the enamel inlay, and the ring of the rim when sharply tapped with the fingernails? Excellent lighting, and positioning that allows maximal viewing of the entire bowl, are obviously good starting points. One additional, word-free (written or oral), possibility is an adjacent, low-key “sensory station” (see Wehner and Sear 2010): either low-tech, utilizing a similar reproduction or handling collection item that can be physically explored; or high-tech, utilizing digital technology to reproduce the tactile sensation of touching the bowl. Done subtly, and always subordinated to the object, such intervention can enhance, rather than diminish, a renewed thing centeredness in display.
Cultivating the analogy of the colonial encounter and the notion of the object’s point of view to facilitate such thing centeredness, can enable the development of both innovative material culture theory and fresh approaches to museum and gallery practice. It is a tack that need not dehumanize the producers and others associated with objects; detract from now established frameworks of museum interpretation, social inclusion, and audience evaluation; or take away from the notion of the museum as a place of learning. Rather, it permits the addition of something potentially very powerful and fundamental, in which the object itself, and its capacity to fascinate, awe, shock, irritate, or puzzle, is recognized and utilized fully too.
Notes
1 1 “Object” and “thing” are variously distinguished in meaning in different branches of theory (e.g., Brown 2001; Hood and Santos 2009). In most of this chapter, I use them interchangeably.
References
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