Museum Management and Curatorship

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The experience of a museum space

Philipp Schorch

To cite this article: Philipp Schorch (2013) The experience of a museum space, Museum
Management and Curatorship, 28:2, 193-208, DOI: 10.1080/09647775.2013.776797

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Museum Management and Curatorship, 2013
Vol. 28, No. 2, 193
208, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09647775.2013.776797

CURATORSHIP
The experience of a museum space
Philipp Schorch*

Alfred Deakin Research Institute (ADRI), Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood,
Melbourne, VIC 3125, Australia
(Received 18 April 2012; final version received 16 August 2012)

Drawing on a long-term narrative study of global visitors to the Museum of New

Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), this paper illuminates the experience of a
museum space. It sheds light on the interpretive interplay between museological
space, content and narrative throughout the construction of meanings by museum
visitors. I argue that these spatial dynamics emerge as a condition of meaning-
making, or hermeneutic foundation, which facilitates the subsequent processes of
meaning-making, or interpretations. The hermeneutic examination of the research
material treats Te Papa as a physical space or form with its individual components
such as architecture, exhibition design and display. This is followed by an
inspection of content which reveals the key function of ‘narrative’ as a human
meaning-making tool in mediating the mutual relationship of spatial form,
museological content and meaning. The empirical insights into the complexity of
the visitor experience reveal that representational and non-representational
dimensions, or narrative and embodiment, are inextricably entangled in the quest
for meaning.
Keywords: visitor experience; aesthetics; museum exhibitions; narrative; herme-
neutics; visitor research; Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; meaning

Introduction

The notion that ‘medium’ and ‘message’ are identical, that what we say and how we say
it are two halves of the same apple, is nowhere more evidently true than in the material
world, the tangible and visible world of objects and the meaningful patterns which we
make with them. (Pearce 1995, 15)

This article offers an empirical investigation of the spatial museum experience by

drawing on a long-term narrative study of global visitors to the Museum of New
Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa). My focus is on revealing the interpretive
dialogue between museological space or form, content and narrative, and the ways in
which visitors engage in processes of meaning-making. The article thus attempts to fill
a gap in the museum literature which largely neglects the spatial characteristics of the
museum experience and its impact upon the construction of meanings (Barrett 2011;
Williams 2007). While I develop this argument through the analysis of narratives
provided by a group of global visitors to Te Papa, I also want to use their narrated
experiences to conflate the growing opposition between non-representational and

*Email: [email protected]
# 2013 Taylor & Francis
194 P. Schorch

representational perspectives on meaning-making. In other words, I show that

embodied meanings or feelings and their narrated representations are tightly
interwoven dimensions of the experience of a museum space and could never be
divided into separate stages (Schorch 2012).
The second contribution of this paper is the introduction of a narrative-
hermeneutic approach to study and understand museum visitors’ meaning-making
processes. The concept of ‘meaning-making’ has been of growing importance within
the museum community, since it can help to bring together human experience and
museological practice as well as human needs and the role of museums within society
(Mason 2005; Silverman 1995). The comprehensive studies ‘Making meaning in art
museums’ by the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries (RCMG 2001a, 2001b)
highlight, however, the paucity of in-depth empirical research on the visitor
experience. Above all, the expanding, pluralised and critical field of museum studies
is characterised by a growing sensitivity for complexity. Museological research now
requires sophisticated theoretical and methodological concepts and approaches to
examine complex processes and prevent simplistic reductions (Macdonald 2010).
Ethnography is one of these. As Gable (2010) stresses, the ethnographer seeks and
dissects cultural complexity, whereas Hooper-Greenhill (2006) considers ethnography
as the most advanced form of museum visitor research. The research underpinning
this article embodies a critical museological ethnography following a narrative-
hermeneutic approach, as I elaborate in more detail below.

Methodological framework: narrative hermeneutics

I argue for an exploration of narrative ‘actions’, ‘meaning’ and ‘Self’ through a
hermeneutic analysis elsewhere (Schorch, forthcoming). Here, I want to pave the way
from theoretical pondering to methodological examination by treating ‘narrative’ as
a ‘hermeneutic expression’ (Polkinghorne 1988). The term ‘expression’ in this context
dates back to Dilthey (1976, 175) who states that ‘the interrelation of life, expression
and understanding, embraces gestures, facial expressions and words, all of which
men use to communicate’. Bruner (1986, 7) carries the discussion into the realm of
‘narrative’ as particular human ‘expression’, ‘As expressions or performed texts,
structured units of experience, such as stories or dramas, are socially constructed
units of meanings’. ‘Every telling’, Bruner (1986, 7) continues, ‘is interpretive’. Any
examination of ‘an experience’ and its ‘expression’ becomes therefore a hermeneutic
task.
To put it succinctly, hermeneutics is ‘the methodology of the interpretation’
(Dilthey 1976). Although I am not dealing with a text as such in this research into a
three-dimensional museum space, it becomes clear that museological representation
also ‘is a dumb object which only the act of interpretation-by-placement can force to
speak’ (Bauman 1978, 230). Although the narrative approach to museological
representations is recognised as the most appropriate way to facilitate meaning-
making among museum visitors (O’Neill 2007; Roberts 1997), the literature offers
only a few examples of its application as a visitor research method (Allen 2002;
Everett and Barrett 2009; Lelliott and Pendlebury 2009; Paris and Mercer 2002;
Rowe, Wertsch, and Kosyaeva 2002). The study underpinning this paper differs from
these examples with regards to the extent and depth of its analysis, because of its
longitudinal aspects, as I interviewed each participant twice over a period of time.
 Museum Management and Curatorship 195

This enabled me to closely investigate the context-dependent ‘endemic fluidity of

meaning’ (Bauman 1978) and the dynamic relationship between meaning and
memory, which, according to Silverman (1995, 162), ‘may be viewed as the core
mechanism of meaning-making’. Furthermore, my hermeneutic examination moves
beyond the inspection of individual narratives, experiences and meanings towards
wider critical discussions and theoretical propositions. The primary method I chose
to follow this empirical approach was semi-structured and in-depth narrative
interviews (Wengraf 2001) with a group of global visitors to Te Papa (12 initial
and follow-up interviews via phone 6 months after the visit; four each from
Australia, Canada and the USA). I also used Pamphilon’s (1999) zoom model to
facilitate the exploration of the multiple layers of meanings by focusing on the
different levels of narratives.
In this article, I have left the integrity of the quotations as untouched as possible
without editing the content or form of the informants’ narrations. I use double
quotations for the empirical voices to distinguish them from theoretical perspectives
in the literature in single quotations. The bolded sections reflect my emphasis and
represent the rising themes and concepts supporting my own interpretation of the
research material.

The experience of a museum space

I start with an analysis of my informants’ narrative journeys and their experience of a
museological space. This reflects a fundamental characteristic of the human
condition; wherever we are and whatever we do, our life is always experienced
within spatial and temporal parameters. It makes sense then, to start my examination
by treating Te Papa as a physical space or form with its individual components such
as architecture, exhibition design and display. After that, I inspect the content
dimension which reveals the key function of ‘narrative’ as a human meaning-making
tool in mediating the mutual relationship of spatial form, museological content and
visitor experience.

Space, form and medium

What then, does it mean to experience a museum space? To answer this question, I
introduce Susan from the USA and the beginning of her interview:

. . . it’s such an amazing beautiful building . . . Well I guess I liked how it’s set up in
different rooms, but you don’t feel like you are in a confined area. It seemed to feel like
you are in a big open area . . . You just kind of walk in and you walk right into an exhibit
and then you walk upstairs and you have your exhibits and everything kind of branches
off and kind of goes smoothly from one place into another. And I liked that . . . it was
nice and when you walk in it’s so simple. There is just a globe there, the fountain.
It’s very simple, like it’s not too overbearing. It doesn’t intimidate you with anything at
first.

Susan’s visit starts with a feeling, a spatial feeling. Both the generous spatial layout
and the flowing relations among individual exhibition spaces provoke an emotive
response. Such primordial bodily movement within an environment is a ‘good way
to start our account of meaning-making’, as Johnson (2007) points out, and during
196 P. Schorch

the course of this article we witness the ‘growth of meaning’ (Johnson 2007)
through embodied interactions. Being human means living in time and space.
Without temporal and spatial points of reference, our life would be simply
impossible. We would not know where and when to move. Susan’s spatial experience
attests to Dewey’s (1934, 13) view that ‘life goes on in an environment; not merely
in it but because of it, through interaction with it’. She feels invited and not
threatened by a potentially overwhelming space. Jack from Canada clearly shares
this feeling:

. . . it’s a place which is not intimidating for the not prepared. It’s nothing at all
intimidating about it.

I turn to the Australian citizen Mike, who conveys a further nuanced spatial
understanding of the museum experience:

. . . change the landscape, you know. It’s another thing this museum does well; it changes
the landscape you are walking through. You don’t feel like you are in gallery A, B, C, D
all in a line and you are moving off to a room left and right. They have tried to visually
break up the spaces even though it’s probably, you know, I don’t know whether it’s just
square underneath?! But it doesn’t look like from the outside. They have broken the
spaces into really unusual movements of people, which means you are not sort of, you
don’t feel like you are in a room with a whole lot of people. But you seem to be sneaking
around and you are not quite sure where you are, but you are you sort of, you know that
it goes vaguely and is right.

We can observe again that a spatial experience manifests itself first and foremost
as a feeling, an ‘embodied meaning’ (Johnson 2007) or ‘‘internal understanding’’
(Schorch 2012). In Mike’s case, his spatial feeling is inextricably linked to a
theoretical speculation about the underlying structures of the space and the reasons
for its spatial flow replacing a ‘sequential locomotion’ (Bennett 1995) with ‘‘unusual
movements of people’’. Another aspect of Mike’s story which struck me is his use of
the term ‘‘landscape’’. It seems to portray the inherently artificial museum layout as
an organism, a living landscape rather than a static building. Hillier and Tzortzki
(2006, 283) argue that spatial experiences are inherently human phenomena and
‘patterns of spatial relations are so basic to our existence that they form part of the
apparatus we think with, rather than think of’. Mike, however, shows that spatial
configurations can become the conscious object of interpretive inspection within
human experiences such as a museum visit. In other words, Mike clearly thinks of
and not only with the surrounding museological space.
The narration of Nicole, from Canada, lends further empirical weight to the
vitality of a spatial ‘‘landscape’’. In fact, the Te Papa space made the most prominent
and lasting impression on her:

And the other thing I noticed right away when I first came was just this layout of the
building was like really beautiful. Just especially the fourth floor, just like when you walk
up there it’s just so open and it just feels really nice, like the actual space . . . It was just
really peaceful, like it was quite out of the way of all the noise and stuff and you kind of
looked on to everything which I liked. And it just was a good environment to read in, like
it wasn’t really hectic and busy . . . it seems it’s so open, it doesn’t feel like there is a floor
per se, you know what I mean, like it’s just kind of gradations of information . . . .
 Museum Management and Curatorship 197

To Nicole, the open museum space assumes the character of a ‘‘peaceful . . .

environment’’ that simply ‘‘feels really nice’’, an organic arrangement instead of
‘‘a floor per se’’. She continues:

. . . the other thing that I find, if there weren’t all those walls there it would be really
chaotic I think. But the walls kind of mitigate the chaos, like they separate. Once you
walk in, yes, there is a lot going on. But if you are just standing in the middle of the
fourth floor it seems really calm and you are not caught up in everything that’s going on
because the walls kind of block that if you know what I mean?! I think that’s a big thing
as well . . . yeah, I think just how everything is laid out it makes sense that on the fourth
floor, you know, there is the Māori and then the immigrant section as well. And it’s just
kind of all together in one area so in that way like the layout makes sense to me.

Nicole offers insights into how spatial compositions pacify environments, ‘‘mitigate
the chaos’’ and ultimately ‘‘make[s] sense’’. She relates Te Papa’s ‘‘layout’’ to New
Zealand’s broad cultural categories of ‘‘Māori’’ and ‘‘immigrant’’. Nicole’s experience
indicates the fluid transition from space to medium, from spatial configuration to
communicative agency. According to her, the cultural connotation of the spatial
‘‘layout makes sense to me’’. At this point, space becomes an interpretive agent ‘active
in the making of meaning’ (MacLeod 2005, 1). This highlights the mutual dependence
of spatial form and thematic content, what we tell and how we tell it, within human
communication and the museum experience. I move to a closer analysis of
museological content later in this paper, but for now it is becoming clear that the
museum space acts as a medium in dialogue with the visitor and emerges as an
integral part of interpretative processes. In other words, Nicole’s spatial engagement
flows into the interpretive construction of meanings connecting the conditions and
processes of meaning-making, or hermeneutic foundations and interpretations, in a
circular hermeneutic trajectory (Schorch, forthcoming).
Nicole’s follow-up interview after 6 months reveals the long-term impact of this
dynamic interplay on her memory:

I think the thing I always remember about Te Papa is just the actual layout of the building
and the structure. I don’t know why, but just that huge, open concept that they have . . .
there is like that part where they have the Treaty of Waitangi on the wall, that whole
area. I don’t know for some reason, not so much the information there but just the
actual layout of it. The thing that really sticks out for me is how open it was and how it
was just really well presented and really like a beautiful space to be in. I just felt really
calm there . . . So again a lot of it is structural for me . . . just because of how it’s laid out.
I think it’s just really well laid out.

In Nicole’s case, the ‘‘actual layout of the building and the structure’’ has clearly left
the most meaningful traces in her memory. The spatial form, however, does not exist
in interpretive isolation but is intertwined with the cultural content of the ‘‘Treaty of
Waitangi’’ exhibit. To put it succinctly, form and content or ‘‘layout’’ and
‘‘information’’ are differently pronounced in each individual experience, but make
sense only in their reciprocal hermeneutic relationship.
The following quotes, which collectively strengthen this argument, highlight the
translation of a physical space as condition of meaning-making into an interpretive
space as process of meaning-making:
198 P. Schorch

And the other thing we really like is the amount of space that’s left between things, even
when there are a lot of people that you don’t feel cramped. Like sometimes in an old-
fashioned box place you feel, you know, one person is standing up against the glass
display and the other person comes in and then it’s too deep and it’s, you don’t see as
well. We really liked the amount of free space, especially in that Māori, ahm the, what
was the name of the house again? . . . (Marae) . . . Marae, especially in the marae. There
was a lot of entry space there. People could be standing, taking pictures, taking pictures
of the glass windows behind it, and it felt very comfortable in there. (John, USA)

Yeah, more than a museum and it’s not all squished in, like there is space. So you can
actually look at something and you can contemplate what you think because it’s not just
this squash. I just feel, you know, there is a, yeah it’s comfortable being here. (Julia,
Australia)

It felt, I find often times with museums so much information is cramped into a tiny
physical space that it’s not only overwhelming, but I actually start to feel like dizzy and
just ‘ah, I gotta get out of here!’ You know what I mean, almost like a mall or
something, like too much energy in a contained space. But in Te Papa it’s just so open
that yes, there is a ton of information, but there is also space to get away from that
information if you need a break or if you just need to, you know, figure out where you
wanna go next . . . like just the fact that you can actually have space to walk from exhibit
to exhibit. It’s not like you are just moving two steps and that’s a brand new exhibit, and
then you move another two steps and ‘oh, its something else!’ It’s kind of like there is
room to just digest everything as you are going along . . . . (Nicole)

All three respondents appreciate the existence of ‘‘free space’’ which simultaneously
creates a ‘‘comfortable . . . feel’’ as well as ‘‘room to just digest everything’’ and
‘‘contemplate what you think’’. The descriptions epitomise once again the emotive
and intellectual reciprocity in visitors’ responses. We simultaneously ‘‘feel’’ and
‘‘think’’ the spatial characteristics of our experiences. In order to exploit the
interpretive potential of museological space and therefore the dynamic interplay of
form and content, spatial compositions need to leave ‘gaps’, as Witcomb (2010)
argues. Spatial gaps or ‘‘free space’’ merge ‘architectural and curatorial intent’
(Hillier and Tzortzki 2006), create ‘narrative ruptures’ (Witcomb 2003) for embodied
interpretive engagements and facilitate the movement from a didactic transmission of
facts to a hermeneutic dialogue of interpretations. At this point, the condition of a
physical space is consciously opened up for the polysemic processes of an interpretive
space with its multiplicity of meanings.
The discussion can be further specified by dissecting the museum space and
focussing on particular displays. For the purpose of exploring the conditions of
meaning-making, I consider ‘display’ as a communicative and aesthetic medium
(Kaplan 1995; Staniszewski 1998) which provides the multisensory, emotive and
embodied context for interpretive actions. I return to Nicole’s narrative journey
through Te Papa from the ‘‘actual layout of the building and the structure’’ to the
particular ‘‘Treaty of Waitaingi’’ display:

I was looking at the Treaty of Waitangi upstairs, the one where it’s talking about like
land claim settlement and stuff like that. And I liked just how it was organised . . . the
thing that was really memorable for me on that for me was often times I find museums
there is so much to read that you just stop reading halfway through. But I liked it in that
exhibition or display, they had kind of a summary on one side of the like placards and
then you flipped around if you wanna more information. So if you wanted to be there
five minutes and just get a brief summary you could, but if you wanna more information
 Museum Management and Curatorship 199

it’s there. I liked that, but I didn’t feel that I was forced to read everything, you know
what I mean!? Sometimes you feel like ‘oh I need to take all this’ and then read it all, so I
felt that was really good . . . .

It is clear that for Nicole, the significance of ‘‘free space’’ and ‘‘room to just digest
everything’’ carries through the experience from the broader museum space to a
specific display. The ‘‘really memorable’’ spatial organisation invites her to
intellectual engagement without becoming emotionally overwhelmed. Nicole goes
on:

. . . like there is, you know, some dense information there, but then in the middle with the
Treaty of Waitangi there is not as much information. And it’s just kind of a nice space
where the Treaty is on the wall and if you want some information you can listen to, you
know, where they have the poles and you can listen to it. But there is not a lot of words
and like it’s just using other mediums for information. And I think that’s really good on
that level because it just, it makes it way less overwhelming. Instead of just seeing like
hundreds of words and just going ‘aaaaaaaah!

The significance of a changing media ‘‘landscape’’ (to use Mike’s term again), which
facilitates meaning-making processes and avoids ‘‘overwhelming’’, will be further
examined in this section. For now, Nicole continues her exploration of the ‘‘Treaty of
Waitangi’’ exhibit:

I just liked that on one side was the crown and on the other side was, like in a way, I am
sure they weren’t trying to make a strong division. But it kind of seemed, you know, on
the one side there was the crown and on the others side was Māori. And just like the two
separate stories and then the middle was kind of joining up.

Nicole’s narration attests once again to the communicative agency of spatial forms.
Both the exhibition ‘‘layout’’ and the display’s media ‘‘landscape’’ feed directly into
the interpretation of content, the ‘‘two separate stories’’ and their ‘‘joining up’’.
Nicole’s follow-up interview lends further empirical weight to the long-term
implications of this dynamic interrelation and its impact on memory beyond the
acquisition of factual information:

One piece of information that really sticks out again is upstairs on the fourth floor . . .
where the Treaty of Waitangi is. Then you go upstairs and I think it tells the story about
the Treaty of Waitangi and it has the Māori side and then the kind of Pakeha side. That
really sticks out . . . I can’t tell you like one specific piece of information but that area
there. But again yeah, when I picture Te Papa I don’t necessarily think of the information,
I think of the layout of it and the structure.

The apparent domination of ‘‘layout’’ and ‘‘structure’’ over ‘‘information’’ in

Nicole’s memory might be regarded as evidence for the failed achievement of
educational goals and learning outcomes. In the context of this paper and the
development of my argument, however, Nicole’s experience serves to emphasise the
inescapable interplay of form and content in the making of meaning and memory
beyond an illusionary linear transmission of facts. Spatial composition, installation
design and thematic content need to be harmonised and mutually enriched to carry
relevant critiques from the world of the ‘thought’ into the realm of the ‘lived’. To put
200 P. Schorch

it simply, no processes of meaning-making can be elicited in museum spaces without

understanding and accepting their conditions.
Jack’s experience of the same exhibition provides more insights into the detailed
spatial dimensions of the museum experience:

Very clearly, very simply, it got a real presence to it. And the imposition of the original
under a glass panel suspended there with the Māori on the one side and the English to
the other and the presentation below. I don’t think most people coming to New Zealand
as tourists probably realise that the Treaty was done in two languages and that part of
the difficulty of it was whoever did the translation didn’t do it well (sarcastic mimic,
both laughing). And there we have the ongoing contentions of the Treaty of Waitangi. I
read about that before I came so I was aware of that and I thought it was presented
simply . . . So I thought in that regard that was designed extremely well and I liked the
entrance to it, you know, the photographs and I expect the design is premised on the
Māori poles. I just thought that was very inviting.

As with Nicole, the ‘‘Treaty of Waitangi’’ display made a lasting impact on Jack, as
he points out in his follow-up interview:

The thing that still stands out most for me, when I think of it that comes immediately to
mind was the Treaty of Waitangi exhibit, which I found extremely good, very memorable in
both its presentation and very helpful in its information . . . And it just creates a whole,
there is a great ambience in that area . . . I found the exhibit itself very impressive, very
accessible, like it has a bit of majesty to it in the way it is presented. But very accessible
to read and one of the very clearest understandings or explanations of the Treaty and
how the variations have occurred between the English and Māori version, what
happened there and why it is still contentious. I just thought that was very well
explained.

We can observe once again the interplay of ‘‘presentation’’ and ‘‘information’’, of

form and content, which conditions interpretive processes. The exhibition’s monu-
mental character or form, its sense of ‘‘majesty’’ runs, thereby the risk of turning into
an indoctrinating symbol of the reformist agenda and citizenry technology of the
state (Bennett 1998), that ‘discourages scepticism’ (Williams 2003, 249) and
forecloses any critical engagement with the Treaty of Waitangi or content itself.
However, this potential ideological threat of interpellation, which mostly remains a
generalised theoretical assumption as empirical studies have shown (Hooper-
Greenhill 1995), does not prevent Jack from drawing his main conclusion: ‘‘it is
still contentious’’.
The preceding examples showed that display compositions and their spatial
juxtapositions form another layer of a museum space. They function as a condition
of meaning-making, as syntactic devices that need to be semantically filled with
meaning. In this context, Mike demonstrates in more detail the performative nature
of a media ‘‘landscape’’:

There is a mixture of how the information is delivered, which is, it’s not unique but
someone has really thought about the problem of people’s attention. If you don’t have
different ways of delivering information you get bored, it’s like listening to the same
song over and over and over again. But this museum has all sorts of odd devices that
keep your attention. Whereas if they would be telling the whole story in one medium it
would be quite, quite difficult . . . there is a mix of the way things are done. And I
 Museum Management and Curatorship 201

particularly liked down on the bottom in the second storey, in the gallery of the trees
and birds, how odd it is the children describing some of the things about the birds and
what not. Whereas it would be easy just to put a dry commentary on the top of it . . . And
all through the museum it seems they have tried to mix the way they are telling you the
story. There is, you know, plenty of image stuff, there is plenty of touching stuff that’s
delivered in different mediums. And I think that’s the real key to this museum, you don’t
get bored over a long period of time, which is quite easy in museums. Art galleries are a
classic example, I mean I defy anyone to go to an art gallery anywhere and spend five
hours in there. I mean, you cannot just look at, you know, a thousand paintings, it’s
ridiculous (me laughing). And it’s the same with the museum if you don’t spread that
message around completely differently . . . So I think from a presentation point of view it
is one of the best museums I have seen for that particular issue of just keeping people
interested over a period of time.

Mike simultaneously experiences and theorises Te Papa’s changing media ‘‘land-

scape’’. He recognises the ‘‘mixture of how the information is delivered’’ and
concludes that in Te Papa ‘‘it seems they have tried to mix the way they are telling
you the story’’. His experience grew out of the dynamics of a multifaceted media
‘‘landscape’’, the various ways of telling, which becomes part of the story told. In this
context, Mike alerts us to the alienation of specialised forms of communication from
everyday perceptual habits. The latter can never be sterilised and reduced to
monotonous sensory engagements such as ‘‘look[ing] at a thousand paintings’’ or
deciphering scientific taxonomies. By producing such artificial ‘‘landscapes’’, art
galleries and museums make sense only for the initiated, the holder of sufficient
communicative capital who is able to decode the specialist enigma and therefore
‘deserves’ the access to such ‘higher’ grounds. This contributes to, and perpetuates
what Bourdieu (1984) calls ‘social distinction’ and the ‘feeling of exclusion’
(Bourdieu and Darbel 1991). For a related New Zealand case study, see Mason
and McCarthy (2006).
Mike’s follow-up interview continues his narrative thread from meaning to
memory

I did like about your museum the presentation of things. And I can’t actually remember
every gallery, but the way that there wasn’t a singular delivery of the message in the manner
which it was done. Some of them were done using voices which I thought was really
good. They weren’t just sort of dry voices but I think even one of the galleries had
children talking. I can’t remember which one it was, but I do remember there were some
children giving the description of what it was. And you know, of course there was signs,
and there was hologram pictures and all sorts of different ways of actually getting over
some information. And it’s sort of a fault of museums that you get rather bored if you
just have one delivery of a message. And I thought that was pretty good the way it was
done. Yeah that was a memorable thing, the way it was put together.

Similar to Nicole’s precedence of ‘‘layout’’ and ‘‘structure’’ over ‘‘information’’ in

memory, Mike ‘‘can’t actually remember every gallery, but the way that there wasn’t a
singular delivery of the message’’. Rather than seeing this as the museum’s ‘failure’ to
successfully teach the subject matter of its galleries, I see it as offering more evidence
for the interweaving, merging and overlapping of ‘‘delivery’’ and ‘‘message’’, or form
and content, in human communication. In other words, the medium becomes an
integral part of the message. In Mike’s case, this condition of meaning-making, ‘‘the
way it was put together’’, evolves in fact into the most ‘‘memorable thing’’.
202 P. Schorch

In this section, I started exploring the experience of a museum space. The

research findings revealed that the spatial composition of Te Papa with its individual
components such as architecture, exhibition design and display performs as a
medium framing and shaping the visitor experience. Physical space inevitably
becomes an interpretive space moving from meaning to memory. The empirical
evidence presented here offered insights into the mutual relationship between such
spatial forms and museological content. I complete the illumination of this interplay
by turning now to a closer examination of content.

Content, context and narrative

While introducing narrative hermeneutics as the methodological framework of this
study, I argued for ‘narrative’ as a fundamental meaning-making tool and
characteristic feature of action, elevating it to the heart of the human condition.
In this section, we see how narrative’s dual function of contextualising space and
content in a particular museum setting interacts with the broader phenomenon of
human meaning-making. The fusion of content, context and narrative becomes
another condition of meaning-making. Mike’s detailed narration is a good starting
point for the analysis and deserves to be quoted in its entirety:

. . . this museum is set up rather differently to quite a few museums. And it seemed to me
that it’s really telling the story of New Zealand rather than trying to specifically direct
your attention to each section of a story in depth. It’s really, it’s not covering it in depth,
you know, it’s not an in-depth type museum. But it seems after a period of time that it’s
trying to cover a whole and show you that these things are interlinked . . . it’s actually told
in a different context which I really liked, because you know, you don’t necessarily as a
visitor want to see a thousand stuffed birds. But when it’s in a context of, which I didn’t
know, the clearing of the land in this country and the burning of the land and other
reasons; and I mean I have thought Europeans had destroyed most of the landscape but
now I found out it was about 50/50, the Māori did exactly the same as the Europeans,
then you see the context of the displays on the birds and the wildlife. You know, they
have some meaning to what it is I thought. And similarly each of the galleries has a
linkage in some way. And I thought the gallery that had the story of the specific tribe
and their experience in land rights . . . it lays in context and a number of the other things
in the museum, because it tells the story of their loss of land right, if they ever had
one . . . But that sort of interestingly links back to the other galleries. When you look
back at the immigration gallery you can see all the enthusiasm of new migrants coming
here. But if you have been to the gallery of that particular tribe, which I never
pronounce, you see that their gain over there for the Europeans was a severe loss on the
gallery on the other side. And it made some sense . . . .

Mike goes on to conclude

So I think that’s the overall impression of this museum is a very interesting linking of the
land, the people and the history of it. It flows a bit better here than in most museums I
have been to. Most museums specialise in certain things. This museum doesn’t
necessarily specialise . . . it doesn’t present itself as an in-depth academic museum . . .
But here it’s a story of the land from the beginning through to the current. And I guess
that’s the impression I will take away from this museum. If you spend the time, you can’t
do it in an hour, you need to go to most of the galleries to see the impact of what these
things are. And I particularly liked it. It was the most impressive thing I have seen.
 Museum Management and Curatorship 203

Mike provides another theoretically and critically informed narrative of his Te Papa
visit. In his view, a ‘‘story’’ generates the ‘‘linkage’’ between each gallery’s subject
matter and its respective ‘‘context’’ as well as the different exhibitions within the
overall museum setting. To Mike, this dynamic interplay just ‘‘made some sense’’,
and previously unfamiliar thematic content gains ‘‘some meaning’’ through narrative
contextualisation. The perceived lack of ‘‘in-depth’’ information compromises
understandings and invites legitimate criticism. At this stage, however, Mike’s
experience sheds light on the conditions of meaning-making which make any
potential in-depth engagement possible. Any critique of an apparent lack of
profundity in museum displays needs to build on the interdependence of content,
context and narrative to facilitate more in-depth insights without compensating what
might be called ‘postmodern superficiality’ with ‘specialist taxonomies’. The latter
might adhere to the scientific ethos of an ever increasing factual knowledge, but will
remain devoid of context and meaning.
In his follow-up interview, Mike elaborates on the ‘‘memorable highlights’’ and
‘‘biggest impression’’:

The memorable highlights for me thinking back, the biggest impression that I’ve left with
that museum and I still think about is the linkage of the galleries and how there is a
narrative being told here at that museum rather than a display of information. And it’s one
of those museums that might not go into huge depth, but it seems to me it’s setting out
to achieve something else apart from, you know, in-depth information. It’s really setting
out to tell a story of that country and the people. So you don’t necessarily need in-depth
if you are trying to tell a story when someone is there only for a day. I mean locals would
go back I suppose, but for me it was, I could see how they were linking some of the
galleries so that the thing made sense in some sort of a way. And that’s the key
memorable thing about that museum was that when you looked at issues of the land and
the animals and what happened to the vegetation, it’s linked back in a gallery later on
which tells you about how there was a lot of clearing done, not necessarily by the white
people but by the Māori and white settlers that came in. And then it sort of made sense
about the narrative told in the previous gallery, about why certain things were like they
are. So I guess that was like the overall impression I brought away from the museum, that
there was a linkage particularly with the people, the Māori and the new settlers . . . I don’t
think either was given a superior role in what shaped New Zealand. But they were sort
of both shown that these are forces that were at work. So the museum sort of had this
feel that there were forces of nature and then there were forces of people that made sense
when you actually looked at all the galleries . . . .

Mike’s remarkably detailed recall of his Te Papa visit after 6 months makes it clear
that the narrative ‘‘linkage’’ has passed through meanings into memory. Along this
long-term interpretive negotiation, the contextualisation of museological content
encounters human meaning-making through ‘narrative’. ‘Context’ is a heavily
debated issue in today’s museum world, one camp regarding it as essential to
democratise cultural institutions and the other side accusing it of desecrating
aesthetic pleasures. In my view, the nature of the parochial either/or argument itself is
the most limiting aspect of this debate. While I certainly regard museums as places of
wonder and imagination, I am also conscious that the aesthetic experience as a
‘‘‘pure’ gaze is a historical invention’’ (Bourdieu 1984, 3) and not an innate human
predisposition. Even more importantly, given the hermeneutic nature of being,
Ricoeur (1981, 44) argues that ‘a sensitivity to context is the necessary complement
and ineluctable counterpart of polysemy’, the characteristic by which all human
204 P. Schorch

phenomena ‘have more than one meaning when considered outside of their use in a
determinate context’.
In a museum setting, narrative contextualisation and the associated multiplicity
of meaning loosen the futile positivist grip on ‘historicity’ and its ‘imaginative
reconstruction’ (Ricoeur 1981, 289), which exposes any accusation of ‘historical
revisionism’ as tautology. Performing as a condition of meaning-making, narrative
also lays the foundation for a form of interactivity beyond its usual mundane
understanding as we can see in the case of Bruce from the USA:

But I can’t think of any other museums that are particularly similar. I have probably
been to a few Native American Indian, you know, artefact kind of museums and it all
seems very out of context. Seeing it in that respect I didn’t spend any time at displays
here that were, you know, like one of the things that stopped me pointing that out was
one of the jade weapons, little jade axes, a short blade that was probably about a hand
span and a half long. And those were not really interesting because they are sort of an
artefact. They are not really, they are a dead thing. They are a thing that’s outside of
context now. They are not really a living thing, whereas the stories that were, you know,
the story of the creation . . . the explanation and the understanding of how earthquakes
happen and the explanation of how the islands came to be, those are still at least to some
extent living things. They are things that can still have animpact on the world rather than
just looking at them and reading the inscription. That makes them more I guess the trite
way of saying would be a more interactive experience, but probably the better way would be
it’s a more writerly experience in that it’s information that once you have it you can interact
with it . . . it will be something that at some point in the future I can imagine bringing
into a conversation with somebody else whereas, you know, a life-size mock-up of a
canoe that was used to travel between islands I am not really sure how to use that. I
mean it’s interesting information being a sailor to sort of see how the boats were built
and what not, but what was more interesting was the presentation of the information in a,
you know, I guess the story in a useful way.

Bruce provides empirical evidence of what Abbott (2002) calls a ‘narrative conscious-
ness’, the processing of human experiences through narrative structures which I
discuss elsewhere (Schorch, forthcoming). To him, ‘‘stories’’ represent ‘‘living things’’
allowing for a ‘‘writerly experience’’ which goes beyond an ‘‘interactive experience’’,
‘‘the trite way of saying’’ unable to capture the sort of active engagement he intends to
describe. A plain ‘‘artefact’’, instead, is a ‘‘dead thing . . . outside of context’’ lacking
the animate qualities to ‘‘have an impact on the world’’. Witcomb (2003) expands on
this in her fruitful exploration of ‘interactivity’ as an imaginative and conceptual
activity beyond its usual technological, physical or mechanical connotations, an
assertion reminiscent of Dewey’s insistence on imaginative qualities in any thought
process (Jackson 1998).
Witcomb (2003) equates ‘interactivity’ with ‘self-inscription’, a process which
blurs the boundaries between ‘production’ and ‘consumption’ involving both sides in
the making of pluralised meanings, perspectives and subjectivities. Dewey (1934)
equally dismisses the meaningless distinction of ‘production’ and ‘perception’ in his
interrogation of the ‘aesthetic experience’, and it seems that Bruce’s ‘‘writerly
experience’’ via ‘‘stories’’ builds the interpretive bridge facilitating their integration.
Unlike a de-contextualised object, a ‘‘story’’ invites him to actively ‘self-inscribe’
‘‘rather than just looking at them and reading the inscription’’ passively.
In bringing this article to a close, and demonstrating the interplay of content and
context, we conclude with the case of the Claudia from Canada:
 Museum Management and Curatorship 205

And I have been fortunate enough to have been here for a couple of months in New
Zealand already. Ahm and I have been hearing with the Moa and the Kiwi bird, you
know, a lot of these different words. So the museum is great for me in that respect
because where I don’t know a lot New Zealand, and I have been slowly accumulating
knowledge, this I guess in a way gave me a way to tie some of it together. And the exhibits
and collections of the animals that would have lived here and birds that have lived here,
gives me some sense of perspective in their size and theories on what they may have
sounded like, how they may have interacted with each other. But before I came it was just
bits and pieces. Yes, there was a bird called the Moa here, a big bird that was all I knew!
(both laughing) And now it’s extinct, but you know this let me actually see it so I can
both visualise it and see what footprint would have been like. And most of the exhibits
upstairs were wonderful as with the giant eagle and the giant Moa. It just gets you
thinking what really would it have been like other than just some abstract thing as ‘there
was this bird in the past’. Yeah, so it really gives it more perspective, you can really
visualise and imagine what it was like.

Claudia’s story represented a crucial crossroads in the study informing this paper.
She stresses that the contextualisation of an otherwise ‘‘abstract thing . . . gives it
more perspective’’. The museum visit enables Claudia to synthesise disjointed ‘‘bits
and pieces’’ of knowledge and interpretively ‘‘tie some of it together’’. In other
words, the interaction of content, context and narrative facilitates the hermeneutic
inspection of the whole and its parts. Importantly, Claudia’s narration encapsulates
the non-representational hermeneutic spheres of the human existence in the form of
sensory engagements which open the gates to imagination as an integral dimension
of any meaning (Schorch 2012).

Conclusion
In this article, I explored the experience of a museum space as a condition of meaning-
making, or hermeneutic foundation, which facilitates and is intertwined with the
processes of meaning-making, or interpretations. The narrative journey started with
the experience of a space, a fundamental characteristic of the human condition in its
spatial and temporal parameters. The form of a museological space and its elements
such as architecture, exhibition design and display merge with the thematic content
within the human experience. Form and content exist and work in a mutually
dependent relationship: what we tell cannot be isolated from how we tell it. The
dominance of ‘‘layout’’ and ‘‘structure’’ over ‘‘information’’ in Nicole’s memory as
well as Mike’s long-term negotiation of a spatial and media ‘‘landscape’’ lent
empirical weight to the conditioning processes. It became evident that ‘‘delivery’’ and
‘‘message’’, or form and content, are inseparable in the construction of meaning
and memory. The research findings revealed the interplay of content, context and
narrative. To Bruce, ‘‘stories’’ offered the hermeneutic means for a ‘‘writerly
experience’’, or ‘interactivity’ as ‘self-inscription’. In Mike’s case, the narrative
‘‘linkage’’ flowed through meanings into memory. The empirical evidence high-
lighted the key function of narrative in ‘structuring space and anchoring content to
context’ (MacLeod 2005, 3), thereby facilitating meaning-making. In Te Papa’s case,
the bicultural architecture becomes an integral part of the bicultural story and the
interpretation of bicultural meanings.
The narrative-hermeneutic approach of the research informing this article has
delivered ethnographic insights into the museum experience by considering both the
206 P. Schorch

complexities of ‘situations’ and the uniqueness of ‘individualising qualities’ (Jackson

1998). My interpretive investigation did not produce narrow definitions of ‘meaning’
such as its equation with ‘learning’, which reduces complex interpretive engagements
to the linear acquisition of factual knowledge and achievement of cognitive goals.
The ‘distinction’ between the conditions and processes of meaning-making should
offer a useful basis for more ethnographic research on the museum experience to gain
a better understanding of its complexity. On the most general level, this study
revealed the depth of meanings, such as the long-term impact of spatial feelings of
‘‘layout’’ and ‘‘structure’’ as an inherent dimension of understandings, beyond
simplistic success indicators such as the attracting and holding power of exhibits.
These unique visitor insights should help both museum theorists and practitioners to
reflect on the meanings of their respective positions and actions.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Tertiary Education Commission Te Amorangi Mātauranga Matua
and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa for co-financing a Bright Future
Enterprise Scholarship supporting this research. I would also like to thank Lee Davidson and
Conal McCarthy for their excellent PhD supervision at Victoria University of Wellington, and
Andrea Witcomb from Deakin University for offering very useful thoughts and comments on
this paper.

Notes on contributor
Philipp Schorch is a Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute (ADRI) and the
Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific (CHCAP) at Deakin University. He received
his PhD in Museum & Heritage Studies from Victoria University of Wellington in partnership
with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa).

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