Museum Gallery Interpretation and Material Culture

Museum Gallery Interpretation and Material Culture publishes the proceedings of the first annual Sackler Centre for Arts Education conference at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. The conference launched the annual series by addressing the question of how gallery interpretation design and management can help museum visitors learn about art and material culture. The book features a range of papers by leading academics, museum learning professionals, graduate researchers and curators from Europe, the USA and Canada.
The papers present diverse new research and practice in the field, and open up debate about the role, design and process of exhibition interpretation in museums, art galleries and historic sites. The authors represent both academics and practitioners, and are affiliated with high quality institutions of broad geographical scope. The result is a strong, consistent representation of current thinking across the theory, methodology and practice of interpretation design for learning in museums.

Juliette Fritsch is Head of Gallery Interpretation, Evaluation and Residencies at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London. The V&A recently completed £100 million gallery renovation project, for which Juliette led the gallery interpretation team. She is known for developing visitor-focused interpretation, and for innovative interpretation in art museums.

1. Introduction . Juliette Fritsch Part I: Situating Interpretation in the Museum Context 2. "The Museum as a Social Instrument": A Democratic Conception of Museum Education. George E. Hein 3. Invoking the Muse: The Purposes and Processes of Communicative Action in Museums. Paulette M. McManus 4. Interpretation and the Art Museum: Between the Familiar and the Unfamiliar. Cheryl Meszaros, eds. Jennifer J Carter, Twyla Gibson Part II: The Role of Interpretation in Art Galleries 5. Towards Some Cartographic Understandings of Art Interpretation in Museums. Christopher Whitehead 6. Art for Whose Sake? Sue Latimer 7. The Seeing Eye: The Seeing "I". Sylvia Lahav 8. Part III:How Can We Define the Role of Language in Museum Interpretation? Juliette Fritsch Part IV: Interpretation, Personal Experience, and Memory 9. "I loved it dearly": Recalling Personal Memories of Dress in the Museum. Torunn Kjolberg 10. Welcome to My World: Personal Narrative and Historic House Interpretation. Mariruth Leftwich 11. Narrative Museum, Museum of Voices: Displaying Rural Culture in the Museo Della Mezzadria Senese, Italy. Marzia MinorePart V: Evidence-Based Practice 12.An Evaluation of Object-Centered Approaches to Interpretation at the British Museum. Steve Slack, David Francis and Claire Edwards 13. The Other Side of the Coin: Audience Consultation and the Interpretation of Numismatic Collections. Effrosyni Nomikou Part VI: Interpretive Strategies for Specific Audiences 14. Designing Effective Interpretation for Contemporary Family Visitors to Art Museums and Galleries: A Reflection of Associated Problems and Issues. Patricia Sterry 15. Interactive Gallery Interpretation for Design Students: Help or Hindrance? Elizabeth Dyson 16. Empower the Audience! How Art Museums Can Become Enriching Creative Spaces for a Wider Audience through Deliberate and Strategic Use of Experience and Learning Theories. Karen Grøn Part VII: Process and People 17. "Reading the Walls": A Study of Curatorial Expectation and Visitor Perception. Sarah Ganz Blythe and Barbara Palley 18. "Education is a department isn’t it?" Perceptions of Education, Learning and Interpretation in Exhibition Development. Juliette Fritsch