WHAT DOES IT MEAN?: Visitors, Objects, and Meaning-Making in History Museums
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Authors
Lanning, Jennifer E.
Issue Date
1999
Type
Capstone
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
My master's project concentrates on adult visitors to one history museum in the United States and the meanings those visitors connect to a limited set of objects to be exhibited therein. The purpose of the project is to contribute to the discourse of meaning-making in museums, and test this theory in practice in order to help create more successful, visitor-centered exhibitions. This purpose was accomplished through conducting an in-depth evaluation of forty-five visitors to the Minnesota History Center (MHC) eliciting what their prior knowledge of five objects proposed for the Sounds Good To Me: Music in Minnesota (Sounds Good To Me) exhibit were, including what further information they would like to know about these same objects. I also surveyed and interviewed thirty-six curators from small history museums in the United States and the exhibits curator of the Sounds Good To Me exhibit at the Minnesota Historical Society (MEIS) in Saint Paul, Minnesota about their museums' use of visitor studies, what curators thought visitors' first impressions of five objects proposed for the Sounds Good To Me exhibit would be, and what else they thought visitors would want to know about these same objects.