applicable research method leading to incontrovertible knowledge claims is essentially an
early-19 century invention, one could also speak of the “invention of the museum”.17
The second, closely related, issue is that of the general status - and in particular the epistemic
value - material objects were and are assigned. In the simplest of terms, this can be boiled
down to the question of whether objects speak for themselves, or whether the context within
which an object is seen is perhaps even more important than the object itself in determining
the way it is perceived, i.e. how it is imbued with meaning and value.
Because any collection - and a 19 century museum in particularB is always about material
objects, the stance one takes on this issue has a direct impact on one’s assessment of any
collection, past or present. More specifically, it determines whether one sees exhibitions - i.e.
the orderly presentation of objects — primarily as an assortment of objects, or whether one
sees the objects as mere props within the larger context of the exhibition, thereby attaching
more significance to the exhibition and its overall aims. This in turn has an effect on one’s
assessment of the impact these exhibitions had on those who visited them. The first approach
could lead one to determine this impact by summing up all the - quite literally - “objective”
evaluations of the items on display, whereas the second approach should lead one to attach far
greater importance to the way the overall impressions conveyed through an exhibition were
assimilated into a visitor’s personal, i.e. subjective, framework of experiences.
This latter approach has come to be associated with what is referred to as the “narrative
interpretation” of past exhibitions. What this entails is treating exhibitions and museums as
akin to a literary genre, meaning that their impact on visitors can be assessed in much the
same way as one might assess the impact of their reading a book.18 Put differently, exhibitions
are essentially interpreted as “readable” stories, providing an overarching narrative that is not
necessarily made explicit, but supported through a variety of factors such as the objects on
display, the manner and sequence in which these objects are presented, explanatory texts
accompanying the items on display, or the architecture of the building in which the exhibition
is held. Museum buildings themselves often provide the most tangible clue as to the visual
appearance of past exhibitions, and in line with the narrative interpretation a number of
studies have recently taken museums’ architecture as a vantage point from which to analyse
their 19th century purpose.19
This idea of exhibitions as “texts” can easily be taken one step further. More to the point, once
one sees exhibitions as narrative structures, this is not a far cry from establishing how they,
17 Andrew Cunningham and Peggy Williams, “De-centring the ‘Big Picture’: The Origins o f Modem Science
and the Modem Origins o f Science,” in The Scientific Revolution: The Essential Readings, ed. Marcus Hellyer
(Malden: Blackwell, 2003).
18 This methodological approach can often be traced back to Carol Duncan, whose decade-long studies were
eventually summarised in: Carol Duncan, Civilizing Rituals: Inside Public Art Museums (London; New York:
Routledge, 1995).
19 A prominent example is: Carla Yanni, Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture o f Display
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005). For an overview and analysis o f the literature on museum
architecture with a particular emphasis on museums with scientific collections see Sophie Forgan, “Building the
Museum: Knowledge, Conflict, and the Power o f Place,” Isis 96, no. 4 (2005): 572-585.
much like any other literary genre, could be actively employed to drive home a certain
message.
This way of seeing exhibitions is associated most prominently with two authors, Eilean
Hooper-Greenhill and Tony Bennett.20 In their work, both of them rely heavily on
Foucauldian ideas of the state, its wielding of power and its influence on the individual.
Bennett in particular portrayed museums as carrying huge political charge. He defined them
as a subset within the larger category of exhibitions. As Bennett phrased it, all types of
exhibition together form the “exhibitionary complex”, within which museums gradually
began to set themselves off from what were perceived as more “vulgar” examples of
exhibitions such as public fairs as the 19th century progressed. More to the point, Bennett
drew on a large amount of archival material from the Anglo-Saxon regions to underscore how
museums began to be defined as places of “high culture”, and — crucially — began to serve as
public sites where citizens could be inculcated with the behavioural patterns and a concept of
sophistication as it was expected from the good (read: bourgeois) citizen of the 19 century.
In other words, Bennett’s argument ran that 19th century public museums became instruments
of cultural engineering.
Although also highly controversial, this approach has proven to be fruitful in many studies
and debates.22 However, its adoption should come with two major caveats. These,
incidentally, are not intended as, and should not be equated with, direct criticism of the work
of the authors mentioned above, but should be taken as a general caution worth keeping in
mind when adapting their premises and arguments to other case studies.
Firstly, describing exhibitions in terms of “power” and “manipulation” threatens to drown out
the constitutive role of the public. The public’s demands, and each and every visitor s
personal background, have a huge impact both on the design of every exhibition as well as its
actual effect on visitors. There is no guarantee that the message that the designers of an
exhibition intended to bring across to their audience is actually what visitors take home from
their experience. Tony Bennett’s work itself is a good example of how selective an audience’s
perception can be — in the introduction to his book The Birth of the Museum he himself
pointed out:
“My concern in this book is largely with museums, fairs and exhibitions as envisaged in the
plans and projections of their advocates, designers, directors and managers. The degree to
which such plans and projections were and are successful in organizing and framing the
experience of the visitor, or, to the contrary, the degree to which such planned effects are
20 Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, Museums and the Shaping o f Knowledge (London; New York: Routledge, 1992);
Tony Bennett, The Birth o f the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London; New York: Routledge, 1995).
21 Bennett, The Birth o f the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, 59-87. “Vulgar” is taken here in the French sense
of the word, i.e. closer to “popular” than “revolting”. Cf. Jonathan R. Topham, Rethinking the History of
Science Popularization / Popular Science,” in Popularizing Science and Technology in the European Periphery,
1800-2000, ed. Faidra Papanelopoulou, Agusti Nieto-Galan, and Enrique Perdiguero (Famham; Burlington:
Ashgate, 2009), 10.
22 For a recent discussion o f Bennett and the applicability o f his theory to the Dutch situation see: Lieske Tibbe
and Martin Weiss, eds., Druk bekeken: collecties en hun publiek in de 19e eeuw, vol. 3, De Negentiende Eeuw
34 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2010).