Book Description:
This is an interdisciplinary book about objects and people in museums and galleries. It deals with the fundamentals of human experience of objects. Chapters explore some of the ways and contexts in which things and people mutually interact; in the process, the book raises questions about how objects carry meaning and feeling, the distinctions between objects and persons, particular qualities of the museum as context for person-object engagements, and the active and embodied role of the museum visitor. Divided into three sections - Objects, Engagements and Interpretations - contained within a foreword, introduction and an afterword, the chapters deal with a range of topics. 'Museum Materialties' examines materiality and other perceptual and ontological qualities of objects themselves; embodied sensory and cognitive engagements - both personal and across a wider audience spread - with particular objects or object types in a museum or gallery setting; notions of aesthetics, affect and wellbeing in museum contexts; and creative and innovative artistic and museum practices that seek to illuminate or critique museum objects and interpretations. Phenomenological and other approaches to embodied experience in an emphatically material world are current in a number of academic areas, most particularly strands of material culture studies within anthropology and cognate disciplines. Thus far, however, there has been no concerted application of this kind of approach to museum collections and interactions with them by museum visitors, curators, artists and researchers. Bringing together essays by scholars and practitioners from a wide disciplinary and international base, this book seeks to make just such a contribution. In so doing it will make a valuable and original addition to the literature of both material culture studies and museum studies alike.
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