Theorising_museum___heritage_visiting_August_2013.pdf

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Draft paper: forthcoming 2014, In K. Message and A. Witcomb (eds) MuseumTheory: An Expanded Field , Oxford: Blackwell Wiley.

To provide feedback on this draft paper email: [email protected]

Theorising museum and heritage visitingLaurajane Smith

Centre for Heritage and Museum StudiesSchool of Archaeology and AnthropologyAustralian National University

AbstractThis chapter examines the performative and embodied nature of the museumvisit and in doing so mounts a challenge to the dominance of the idea that themuseum visit is, or should be, about learning. Rather, the argument advancedis that visitors use museums in a wide range of ways and that the learningparadigm restricts the ability of researchers and museum professionals torecognize this diversity. Understanding the visit as an embodied performancereveals the means by which visitors emotionally engage with museumexhibitions and thus identifies the ways in which visitors undertake their own‘heritage making’ and the production and reinforcement of their ownmeanings and cultural and political values. Interviews with visitors tomuseums and other sites of heritage in England, Australia and the USA areused to illustrate and support the argument.

Keywords: Education, learning, emotion, visitor studies, performativity,embodiment

Introduction

The idea that visitors attend museums and heritage sites for the purposes of education

or learning has dominated debate in both museology and heritage management. This

chapter, however, questions both the degree to which people go to museums seeking

education or learning opportunities, and the degree to which museums may be

perceived as educational institutions. This is not to say that learning and education are

not important, but rather that they may not be as important or as all-encompassing an

explanation of the visitor experience as much of the heritage and museums literature

tends to assume. Rather than a learning experience, analytically, the museum visit

may be understood as a cultural performance in which people either consciously or

unconsciously seek to have their views, sense of self and social or cultural belonging

reinforced.



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Heritage as a performance

The conceptual framework that informs this study is based on the idea that museum

visiting is itself a form of cultural production (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 1998) and

communicative action (Dicks, 2000). Indeed, visiting is part of the process of

‘heritage-making’. As I have argued elsewhere, the idea of ‘heritage’ cannot be

reduced to a concern with materiality; rather, heritage is more usefully understood as

a discourse that frames a set of cultural practices that are concerned with utilizing the

past for creating cultural meaning for the present (Smith, 2006). Further, as Poria et al

(2003) observe, many people go to heritage sites, in which I include museums, to

‘feel’. Heritage, or heritage making, is an embodied set of practices or performances

in which cultural meaning is continually negotiated and remade, and is, moreover, a

process in which people emotionally invest in certain understandings of the past and

what they mean for contemporary identity and sense of place.

Heritage is thus a subjective political negotiation of identity, place and memory, and it

is something that is done rather than something we simply ‘have’ or ‘curate’ and

protect. It is, as David Harvey (2001, p. 327) argues, a ‘verb’. There is no one

defining action, but rather a range of activities that include remembering,

commemoration, communicating and passing on knowledge and memories, as well as

asserting and emotionally engaging with expressions of identity and the social and

cultural values and meanings that underpins these expressions. It is a process that can

have conservative or socially progressive outcomes, but above all, it is an experience

or moment of active cultural engagement that has a range of consequences.



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These consequences include the creation of a set of emotional or affective experiences

and memories that work to assist the expression of identity and belonging. They also

facilitate the development and strengthening of social networks and relations that are

in themselves binding. These networks are facilitated through activities in which

social and cultural values, meanings and understandings about the past and present are

sometimes explicitly, and sometimes implicitly, worked out and inspected and then

either rejected, embraced or transformed. Identity is not simply something produced

or represented by heritage places or heritage moments, but is rather actively and

continually recreated and negotiated as people, communities and institutions

reinterpret, remember, forget and reassess the meaning of the past in terms of the

social, cultural and political needs of the present (Smith, 2006, p.44f).

Heritage is a performance that occurs at a number of different levels and contexts.

Heritage making occurs at national and institutional levels, as museums and other

heritage agencies make choices in amassing collections, and in developing exhibitions

or choosing to conserve or preserve certain places or artefacts. Sites and objects are

not ‘found’, but rather identified as representative of the heritage stories that heritage

and museum professionals wish to make. At another level, communities and other

sub-national groups also may engage in heritage making in the way they collectively

represent and express themselves (Smith and Waterton, 2009). The ways in which

heritage making is undertaken at national, institutional and community levels is well

documented in the heritage and museum literature (see Dicks, 2000; Watson, 2007;

Harrison, 2010; Waterton and Watson, 2010). There is, additionally, an emerging

literature that examines the ways in which individuals engage in heritage making,

particularly while visiting museums (see amongst others, Dicks 2000; Bagnall 2003;



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Macdonald 2002, 2009). This literature has begun to emphasise the embodied nature

of visiting as a commitment to remembering certain histories (see in particular

Macdonald 2009). However, these moments of heritage making often remain

unrecognized by prevailing assumptions that heritage and museum visiting is

primarily about learning and to date there has been little examination of what the

embodied visit may mean for the learning paradigm.

Museums and the three Ls: learning and lifelong learning

The nineteenth century idea of the museum as an educational establishment in many

ways still frames much of the theoretical and practical understanding of the roles and

functions of museums. Education, as Hooper-Greenhill was able to assert in the

1990s (1994, p.19), ‘is now felt to be a primary function of all museums’. While an

emphasis on didactic education has changed, and museums have broadened their aims

and focus, assumptions about the link between museums and education remain strong.

In the last two decades we have seen a conceptual shift from a discourse that

emphasised instruction, and a concern in the literature with debates about museum

communication to visitors (see for instance, Hooper-Greenhill, 1991, 1994b) to one

that stresses learning and a concern to understand visitors’ learning processes (Kelly,

2007, pp.276-7; see also Hooper-Greenhill, 2007a). This change corresponds to, and

is in many ways influenced by, the recognition of the political nature of museums and

increasing debate about their social role. Calls for museums to engage with cultural

and social diversity (Sandell, 2007), to explore their role as ‘contact zones’ (Clifford,

1997) and to develop civic/community engagement (Crooke, 2006; Watson, 2007;

Janes, 2009) among others, has lead to the softening of the discourse on education to

one of ‘learning’ and the provision of life-long learning skills and opportunities. For



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Hooper-Greenhill (2007b), however, this conjunction has only emphasised the

importance of museum education. While she stresses the need for the reworking of

education philosophies based on the rationalities of modernity, education remains the

raison d'être of museums, as the educational role of museums has simply been

broadened to both engage with diversity and to provide learning opportunities for

visitors. The discourse on education and learning frames the way museums are

understood. Hooper-Greenhill’s (2007a, b) insistence on the educational role of

museums, is, in many ways unquestionable, given the theoretical and philosophical

underpinnings of both museology and museum studies.

The governmentality thesis that has influenced theoretical debate within museums

studies helps to reinforce the educational/learning discourse. The nineteenth century

legacies of museums in governing and regulating the conduct and representation of

citizens has been well documented (Bennett, 1995). However, while the utility of this

analysis of museum work remains, as Witcomb (2003) points out, it tends to focus

attention on the authority of the museum and the disciplines that inform museum

work. Ideas of authority and education/learning help to ensure that the museums,

museum practices and museum professionals become the central focus of analysis.

While the governmentality thesis offers a compelling and useful analysis of the

political work that museums do, and while a critical concern about museum education

ensures that professional ethical debate is maintained, neither conceptual framework

encourages analysis or accounts of ways in which museums may themselves be used

by non-experts. Nor does it offer consideration of what happens when the regulatory

role of museums may be contested in either conscious or unconscious ways by

visitors. Similarly, Graham (2002) has questioned the dominance of the idea of



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museum visiting as an investment in cultural capital or an investment in particular

readings of regulatory identity. He argues that Bourdieu’s thesis tends to overlook the

possibility that heritage, in its various forms, can be used to contest received ideas of

identity as much as it can be used to maintain them.

Visitor studies, although having a long history in museology, tend to have been driven

by quantitative methods that explore marketing issues or assess how well visitors have

‘learned’ (Bicknell and Farmelo, 1993; Hooper-Greenhill, 2006). While qualitative

research that seeks to understand visitors’ cultural and social perceptions and the

interplay between memory, embodiment and emotions has increased, particularly over

the last decade (see for instance, work by Katriel 1994; Macdonald, 2002, 2009,

Bagnall, 2003; Palmer, 2005; Sandell, 2007; Sather-Wagstaff, 2011; Schorch 2014,

amongst others), this body of work’s impact on museum policy and practice remains

uncertain. Hooper-Greenhill argues that this is because visitor centric studies do not

feed directly into museum practices as they fit uncomfortably with the object centric

concerns of the museum sector (2006, p. 374). Conversely, however, the work of John

Falk and Lynn Dierking, has been particularly influential, and unlike most of the other

qualitative work cited above focuses explicitly on the idea of learning. Their work

stresses the experiential nature of learning, drawing attention to the need to

understand the personal, social and physical context of the learner, and challenging

the concept of linear instructional models (Falk and Dierking, 1992). They have

developed the Contextual Model of Learning, which attempts to account for the

complexities of learning in different ‘free-choice’ contexts (2000). Museums are

defined as free-choice environments, unlike schools or similar institutions, as

attendance is voluntarily (Falk and Storksdieck, 2005). This model recognises that



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what is learned is not always what is intended by curatorial staff or driven by

exhibition content, but that ‘everyone who visits learns something’ (Falk, 2005,

p.266). Learning is perceived to be both unconscious and conscious and is ‘simply

part of being human’ (Heimlick, 2005, p.262). The Contextual model aims to describe

the ‘varied stories and meanings that visitors construct from their museum

experiences’ (Falk, 2004, p.85) and to determine how visitors learn. One of the

assumptions embedded in this work is not simply that visitors learn, but rather that

learning is what the visit is all about. There is no discussion of if or to what extent

learning is or is not important.

The Contextual Model of Learning developed by Falk, Dierking and colleagues

attempts to determine the various factors that enable learning in free-choice settings,

where learning is defined as a complex biological and personal process involving

changes in both ‘brain and body’ (Falk and Dierking, 2000, p.11; Falk, 2005, p.266)

and changes in knowledge and understanding (Falk and Storksdieck, 2005, p.751).

Factors in learning have been identified as a complex interaction between the

motivation of the learner, learning identities assumed by the learner (of which they

have identified five key ‘identities’ and numerous recombination’s of these, see Falk,

2006, 2009), existing knowledge, expectations and environment/exhibition design.

They also point out that no single factor among these can be singled out as

determining learning; rather it is a process that is influenced by all of the factors (Falk

and Storksdieck, 2005, p.770). The model is quite complex, and allows ‘us to explain

only a small portion of the learning that we were able to record’ (Falk and

Storksdieck, 2005, p.770). Longitudinal studies have also revealed that the

knowledge, or sense of what was learned at a museum visit, often does not stay with



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many of those surveyed (Storksdieck et al, 2005, p.358-9), although the memory of

the visit may be enduring (Falk, 2011, p.151). The ‘museum identities’ that this

research defines are based on the motivations of the visitor (or learner) and not on

other forms of ‘identity’ (Falk, 2009). While Falk acknowledges that visitors to

museums may be seeking to affirm identities based on such things as gender, class

and ethnicity he uses concepts of identities ‘the museum profession might find more

prosaic’ (2006, p.161). This prosaic use of visitor motivation to define identity, and

thus what visitors are doing (and presumably learning), appears somewhat circular

and dismisses a range of other social and political work that may not relate to issues

of ‘learning’, however that may be defined (see Bickford, 2010; McCray, 2010;

Dawson and Jenson, 2011, for fuller critique). It also, once again, speaks to a

museum-practice-centric understanding of how museums may be used. The

complexities unaccounted for by the model may also indicate that the conceptual

framework of ‘learning/education’ being used here is simply missing other factors that

may be at play. Is learning the best framework for understanding the social, cultural

and political consequences of visiting a museum? Is learning all that is being done?

Tellingly the above research has tended to be confined to US science museums, zoos,

aquariums and other natural science attractions. While I do not suggest scientific

knowledge is culturally or politically neutral, particularly in the US given the politics

associated with bizarre challenges to scientific knowledge on issues such as evolution

and climate change, it is possible that visitors will interact with such museums in

different ways than they do with museums that engage with history, politics and

cultural representations. In many ways, science museums are less threatening to



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assumptions that museums are about leaning/education than many other types of

museums.

A significant area of visitor analyses that remains untapped within museum studies

can be found within tourism studies. Visitor responses to both cultural heritage sites

and museums have been extensively explored in this sector, and while most of this

research is market driven, a significant body of work explores the emotional and

embodied experiences of visitors and tourists and the meanings derived from these

experiences (Macintosh and Prentice, 1999; Crouch, 2002; Poria et al, 2003: Poria,

2007; Prentice and Anderson, 2007; Smith et al, 2012). While traditional museum

visitor studies tend to focus on ‘learning’ issues, traditional tourism research has

tended to be framed by concerns about ‘recreation’. What both sets of studies tend to

do is conflate motivation with the cultural and social ‘work’ that visitors/tourists do at

museums or heritage sites and potentially miss the complexities of people’s

behaviour, and the social and cultural significance of their visit. This is not to say that

learning and recreation are not both important issues, but simply to ask is that all that

is really done, by everyone all the time or indeed by any one visitor during a single

visit.

This chapter then offers an account of visitor experiences to museums and heritage

sites aimed at exploring what else, other than learning or recreation, with which

visitors might be engaging. To explore this question, a qualitative interview schedule

that self-consciously did not presuppose that learning/education or recreation were the

primary reason for visiting museum and heritage sites was used. The aim was to

simply record people, in their own words, discussing what visiting means to them.



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Methodology

The chapter draws on three bodies of data. Firstly, it examines interview data

collected in 2007 with visitors to exhibitions marking the bicentenary of Britain’s

abolition of the slave trade. The bicentenary was seen by many museums as an

opportunity to provide exhibitions that would facilitate not only the acknowledgement

of this ‘hidden history’ in British society, but also environments that would facilitate

learning and public debate on the legacies of this history. However, interviews reveal

a range of issues that impeded ‘learning’, with many of those interviewed seeking

affirmation of existing knowledge, beliefs and views. Secondly, this data is then

compared with street interviews undertaken in three English cities in 2007 that aimed

to obtain a glimpse of how non-museum visitors were engaging with the bicentenary.

The comparative data reveal that many of those interviewed in the street, and who

identified as non-traditional museum-goers, were no more or less critically engaged or

informed with issues of legacy than were the museum-goers. The implications of this

for understanding the meaning of museum visits is explored and developed in the

context of the third data set: interviews collected from a range of different genres of

museums (house museums, national museums, heritage centres, and regional

museums) in England (during 2004), Australia (2010-11) and the United States

(2011). This third data set, collected at a variety of different museums of history and

culture, illustrates that the issues identified in the bicentennial data, are not confined

to controversial or dissonant contexts, and may be generalised more broadly. While

many visitors to museums nominate that their reason for visiting is ‘educational’ for

either themselves or their children, closer interrogation reveals that what is occurring

is the enacting of a performance that provides institutional and structured



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reinforcement of a visitor’s sense of self, their ideological positions and the cultural

values that underpin both of these.

The interview schedule used in this study consisted of a range of demographic

questions that recorded, amongst other variables, a respondent’s age, educational

attainment, occupation, gender, self-identified ethic affiliation, if they were regular

museums goers and so forth. These were followed by a core of 12 open-ended

questions that were standard across all of the museums reported below 1. Further open-

ended questions were asked at some museums, however, the data reported on here

refers to the core 12 questions. These questions centred on asking people why they

were visiting, what messages they took away from the exhibitions, if the visit had

changed their views about the past or present, how did the exhibition/museum make

them feel and so forth.

Responses to the open-ended questions were either recorded or detailed notes were

taken. The interview was conducted as people were about to exit the museum, or

about to exit the exhibition the research was targeting. Interviews were generally

undertaken one-to-one, although group interviews were taken where couples or visitor

groups desired to be interviewed collectively. Interviews were transcribed and read

through to identify themes. Each question was then coded according to these themes

and the codes were used to derive descriptive statistics and to facilitate cross-

referencing of themes with demographic variables using SPSS and NVivo. The

methodology was designed to get a ‘snap-shot’ of what the museum visit meant to the

interviewee at the time of the visit, and how the visit was being used to construct

meaning. No attempt at determining a long-term meaning of the visit was made, as the



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interview simply aimed at allowing visitors to discuss the meaning of the visit in their

own words at the time of the visit.

In the following, quotations from the interviews are used to illustrate overall findings,

generally two or three examples are used, although when more are used this is done to

illustrate the variation in nuance in the overall response to particular questions.

Anonymous details of the speaker are provided after each quote. Occupation and

ethnicity are reported as defined by the speaker.

Commemorating and learning a forgotten history: the 1807 bicentenary of the

British abolition of the slave trade

The history of Britain’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade is often

characterized as a forgotten history (Kowaleski Wallace, 2006; Oldfield, 2007;

Dresser, 2009). It is certainly an aspect of British history and culture that has not often

been engaged with in public contexts. Indeed, it was only in 2009, after the

bicentenary, that this history was made a compulsory part of the UK school

curriculum (Paton and Webster, 2009, p.166). The 2007 bicentenary of the abolition

of the British slave trade provided museums with an opportunity to engage the public

in this traumatic and dissonant history; in short, this was an opportunity for museum

visitors to learn about this history and its legacies for contemporary Britain. The

exhibitions all followed very similar themes and structures, and explored the origins

of the trade, Britain’s role in both the trade and its abolition, the realities of the

Atlantic crossing and plantation life, resistance by enslaved Africans and the legacies

of continuing racism (See Cubitt, 2009, 2010 for further details and analyses of the



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exhibitions; also Paton, 2009). My aim here is not to go into detail about the context

of the bicentenary and how museums responded to it, but rather to look at how

audiences at eight museums surveyed during 2007 responded to the exhibitions (for

more detail see Cubitt, 2009; Smith et al, 2010; Smith et al, 2011). The overall visitor

responses to the exhibitions have been reported elsewhere (Smith, 2010), and I will

draw on this material to explore to what extent the 1,498 visitors interviewed at these

museums engaged in learning.

Table 1 lists the museums and numbers of visitors surveyed at them. It is important to

note that cross tabulation between the museums produced very little significant

variation in visitor responses (Smith, 2010, p. 198). The survey sample, in keeping

with the traditional profile of British museum visitors, was dominated by visitors from

socio-economic backgrounds (74%) traditionally associated with the middle classes, 2

and most were educated to university level (51%). The sample was evenly divided

between men and women (each 50%) and those aged over 45 represented 51% of the

sample. The majority of respondents self-identified as white British (see table 2),

although visitors identifying as African-Caribbean (or African British, or ‘black’ or

‘mixed race’ – if using the official British ethnic identifiers) were more highly

represented at these exhibitions than normally recorded in British museum surveys

(Renaissance Hub Exit Survey, 2006).

Table 1: Visitor interviews per Museum

MUSEUM NUMBER OF VISITORS



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British Museum 206

National Maritime Museum 205

British Empire and Commonwealth Museum 162

International Slavery Museum, Liverpool 339

Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery 165

Museum of London Docklands 182

Wilberforce House Museum, Hull 148

Harewood House 91

Total 1498

Table 2: Ethnicity

Frequency Valid Percent

‘White’ British/English 867 58.4

Non-British 348 23.4

‘Black’ /African-Caribbean/African British 182 12.3

‘Mixed Race’ British 40 2.7

‘Asian’ British 34 2.3

Other 14 .9

Total 1485 100.0



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As documented elsewhere (Smith, 2010), there were three general themes in the

responses to the exhibitions, which tended to correlate with ethnic identity. The first

of these was dominated by those who self-identified as African-Caribbean or Asian

British, and who were often quite engaged with the exhibitions, but tended to be

occupied in assessing what the exhibitions had to say about the degree to which

British society was endeavouring to acknowledge the history and legacies of

enslavement. For instance:

I don't know what to say, its nice to see that people are recognising slavery,

more than, more people see it makes it more important because from my

background I know about it, but other people might not know, so it gives other

people a chance to see it can understand what went on.

(BA126(126): male, 45-54, coat trimmer, Afro-Caribbean British, 2007) 3

Well, I'm glad this exhibition is on actually, for me it’s about recognition or

initial recognition of what happened, it's initial recognition of telling the story,

it's the initial recognition of I don't think that Britain or London is sorry

because London is built upon slavery you wouldn't have London as it is if

there wasn't slavery. So I can't see people being really sorry for it, I think they

may have regrets, but I think if they had to do it all again I personally think

they would, because it means power, its financial and economic power and

without that nobody survives, and part of the reason why black people are not

economically viable in many instances is because we haven’t got economic

power. Is that going to change? I suspect not, because nobody wants to give up

power, why should you if you have it, but then why shouldn't denied groups



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want it, and why should you deny them your chance. If you deny them you

have more. So it’s not about sharing, it’s about accumulating wealth and

holding onto it, because wealth to me equals power.

(DE30(98): female, 55-64, African Caribbean, 2007)

In short, the majority of African-Caribbean or Asian British respondents were using

their visit to make judgements about the content of the exhibitions and to assess to

what extent their experiences of racism in both the past and present were being

recognized or misrecognized by the exhibition. This assessment was often then used

as a platform during the interviews from which to make critical social commentaries

about the state of multiculturalism and racism in contemporary British society. These

were highly politicized uses of the exhibition, and to understand this use, it is

important to consider the role that museum exhibitions, and heritage more generally,

plays in the politics of recognition (Fraser, 2001). How a person, and the collective to

which that person belongs, are recognized or misrecognized influences the degree to

which society at large gives legitimacy to their historical and contemporary

experiences, and thus legitimacy to the claims for social justice or restitution made on

the basis of those experiences. For many African-Caribbean British visitors the

exhibition was not approached as a learning opportunity at all, but as a means to

calculate the extent to which their political claims for social justice were being

validated by the ways in which the museums were telling the history of African

enslavement.



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The second and most frequent response was dominated by white British respondents,

and non-British respondents from Europe. It is characterized by the extent to which

individuals attempted to insulate or distance themselves from the negative emotions

and reflections on self and nation engendered by the exhibitions. A range of

discursive strategies and self-sufficient arguments were employed to diffuse negative

emotions and worked to negate any critical or deep engagement with the content of

the exhibitions (Smith, 2010). What these discursive strategies did was to close down

both empathy and thus imagination.

The third theme was characterised by those who were deeply engaged in the

exhibition, were confronted by it, but used empathy and imagination to alter their

understandings of the past or present. Although often confronted by the exhibition,

such individuals, from all ethnic backgrounds, tended to use their engagement to

rethink their understanding of their British, or other national, identity or to make some

form of critical commentary about the present. For instance:

I think that… it is really easy to be quite sentimental about Britain and the

colonial past, and you know all about rule Britannia and it's great it’s quite

easy to be quite blind about the cost of that.

(BHA16: female, 16-24, trainee solicitor, white British)

Yes in terms that we do need to think about who we are and our effect on other

people.

(BA48(49): male, 45-54, unemployed, white British)



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[the exhibition] speaks to my whiteness. I don't know what quite that means

but it makes me feel (pause). I don't. (pause) Er. Well the obvious thing to say

is that it makes me feel guilty but it doesn’t really, it makes me feel privileged.

I don't think it makes me feel guilty.

(BE3(132): female, 45-54, software designer, white British)

It can be argued that in these contexts people were learning, as understandings were

altered or augmented. What was important in these contexts though was the degree of

what might be called ‘emotional intelligence’ that visitors employed. The exhibitions

generated many different emotions in visitors. One question asked visitors how the

exhibitions made them feel, and although many visitors avoided explicitly answering

this direct question the emotional tenor of the interviews was often very significant,

with the majority of white British talking in many different ways about issues of guilt.

Many talked of guilt in terms of denial, such as:

Interviewer: are you part of the history represented here?

Erm, (pause) I don't think so, no, … I'd have a big weight of guilt around me

[if I did], but I don’t, so I don’t relate to this exhibition, [I don’t think] that it

has anything to do with me, I do acknowledging what happened in the slave

trade and I do think it’s wrong.

(ME57(201): male, 55-64, conservation assistant, white British, 2007)

Erm...(exhales) I don't know really, I think it makes me realise what a long

way we've come since the abolition of slavery in our attitude towards other

people and that something like that couldn't happen nowadays in the way that



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it did at its height, mmm, and it makes me feel, makes me feel sorry for the

people who were taken as slaves but I don't really feel guilty about it myself.

(BA30(31): female, 45-54, housewife, white British, 2007)

Interviewer: How does the exhibition make you feel?

Okay let’s put the question in another way which I can answer it in a way that

maybe you want. It doesn't make me feel guilty (laughs).

(BE13(141): male, 55-64, auctioneer, white British, 2007)

Although feelings of guilt and shame were often denied, they were nonetheless

frequently the ‘elephant in the room’ for many visitors, whose strategies of deflection,

were regularly about insulating themselves from directly engaging with these negative

feelings. As one person, who noted that he did not feel guilty, went onto puzzle ‘what

I found odd was reacting to [the exhibition] on an emotional level rather than a factual

level’ (BA22(22) male, 35-44, company director, white British, 2007). Those that

engaged positively tended to be those who could confront such feelings and work

through them to allow themselves to empathize with the experiences of the enslaved

discussed in the exhibitions. That is, they exhibited skills in addressing and exploring

their feelings in imaginative and constructive ways that helped them to cognitively

deal with complex issues, skills that some refer to as emotional intelligence (Salovey

and Grewal 2005; Mayer et al 2008).

What is informative, though, is the way visitors talked about ‘learning’. The

discursive strategies that visitors employed in shutting down their emotional



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engagement with the exhibitions were of two types. One was the use of clichés, such

as ‘mans’ inhumanity to man’, this was often used to alleviate deeper engagement or

reflection on the exhibition because, at the end of the day, it was just ‘mans’

inhumanity to man’ (Smith, 2010, p.204). Another favourite cliché was ‘we must

move forward’, in that yes, these were terrible times, but we must move forward: ‘you

have to look forward instead of going back, yes its your history but don’t go on about

it, … if you keep on going on about it you never move forward’ (LA17(17): female,

45-54, retail white British, 2007). While clichéd statements may be used when words

fail a speaker, they can nonetheless also be used to close down debate and reflection.

When those interviewed used the term learning, and it is important to note that

‘learning’ or other synonyms were not used in the interview schedule, it was itself

sometimes used in clichéd ways to deflect and disengage. For instance, in this

exchange about the significance of the bicentenary the idea of learning was used

paradoxically to dismiss the significance of the exhibition’s content:

Interviewer: Is there any national significance in marking 1807?

Erm...No I don't think so, leave it as it is, and just learn from history.

Interviewer: In that case do you think it’s not been a good idea to have an

exhibition like this?

It’s interesting to know about it, it’s important to learn about it but I don't

think you should be marking a specific date.

Interviewer: Why not?

Because you could do it for everything couldn't you.

(BA26(26): female, 25-34, sales assistant, white British, 2007)



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This speaker was uncomfortable about the content of the exhibition and the idea of the

bicentenary (dismissing it through ridicule because you could mark every date).

‘Learning’ was used here to defuse the meaning of the exhibition, learning is a term

that implies something positive if not noble, and is used to imply society can forget

this aspect of history because we have learnt from it and ‘moved on’. As another

speaker put it: ‘No, again, it’s history, move on and learn’ (WHD 26 (125): female,

55-64, newsagent, white British). This use of the term becomes part of a self-

sufficient argument, in so far as a positive term, ‘learning’, is used to legitimate the

relegation of experiences of racism into the past, into history, and as such it can be left

in the past because we have learnt and moved on.

This is not to say that all uses of this term in the interviews followed this pattern,

indeed people did talk movingly and critically about the importance of learning from

the museum exhibition, but again this frequently occurred when individuals were

prepared to confront negative emotions. However, one of the things this does

highlight is the need to look critically at the way people use particular discourses; just

because worlds such as learning are used, does not of course mean that learning was

being done.

One of the distinct themes that emerged in these interviews was the tendency for the

exhibitions to not change visitors’ views, but rather the exhibitions tended to simply

reinforce the knowledge, feelings or opinions that visitors held prior to their arrival at

the museum. When asked if a respondent’s views of the past or present had been

changed at all by their visit 76% responded ‘no’, while 10% nominated they had

gained new information and 7.4% considered that they were better informed, and/or



22

their understanding of the past or present had changed in someway. A further 1.3%

noted that they had had an epiphany. In response to both this question, and often

raised unprompted in other areas of the interview, people talked about their visit as

‘reinforcing’, and again it is important to note this word, or synonyms of it, were not

used in the interview schedule:

No, no, I don't think [the exhibition has changed my views] I think it was

reinforcement, obviously there was information I didn't know or have, but it’s

just been reinforcing.

(LA41(75): female, 55-64, school teacher, white British, 2007)

It's reinforced rather than opened up a new avenue that we didn't know

about…

(DE24(92):female, 55-64, civil servant, white British, 2007)

No. Reinforces but not change.

(DA28(28): male, 35-44, administrator, African-Caribbean British, 2007)

No I think it’s reinforced my views, they've not really changed.

(MH22(22): female, 16-24, teacher, white British)

…not changed anything, it’s probably reinforced but not changed.

(WHGC 4 (8): male, 35-44, decorator, white British)



23

What is being reinforced here was never entirely clear. Some nominated that the

exhibitions reinforced knowledge, opinions, meanings and messages they already

knew. Others seem to have been seeking a sense in which their identity and pride in

‘being British’ would be reinforced; it was evident in some of the interviews that

people were concerned that they wanted to feel pride in their nation’s history, to have

that identity and sense of pride reinforced:

In this retrospective, the marking is important for English pride as well: we did

it very wrongly, but we were the first country that realised it and to adopt the

abolition!

(MK25(61): male, 55-64, European, 2007)

[this museum is] Em a place to come to be aware of your, you know, to get

some pride of your heritage and also to be aware of what difference you can

make as well.

(WHD4(103): male, 45-54, teacher, white British, 2007)

Yes, I mean one is definitely proud of one’s … anniversary [i.e. the

bicentenary] […] It didn’t changed my views, as I said, it helped reinforce

them, one is proud of his British history, you know. One is always aware in an

exhibition like this that there are many things we shouldn’t be proud of, and

we need to be, we need to examine ourselves about.

(BHE7(80): male, 45-54, sales manager, white British, 2007)



24

However, the exhibitions on enslavement did not aim to reinforce national pride, but

rather offered challenges to received national narratives and identity. This challenge,

and issues of guilt and shame, was diffused not only by the use of cliché, but more

frequently and explicitly by the use of self-sufficient arguments. This was the

prominent discursive strategy used to insulate visitors from the challenges and

negative emotions invoked by the predatory history of British involvement in African

enslavement. Self-sufficient arguments were so frequently used by white British

respondents in the interviews that they became clichés in themselves in the context of

the surveyed population. Self-sufficient arguments are statements that appear as so

much common sense that they cannot be questioned, such as ‘you cannot turn back

the hands of time’ (Wetherell and Potter, 1992; Augoustinos et al, 2002; Augoustinos

and Every, 2007). The five self-sufficient arguments identified in this study (see

Smith, 2010) were very similar to those identified in studies of race talk by

researchers from other Western contexts, and which have been identified as examples

of modern or covert racism and have been shown to work to close down critical

engagement and reflection (Augoustinos and Every, 2010). Examples of these five

arguments are:

1. You cannot turn back the hands of time:

I don't think we should have a great guilt trip about what happened because it

is 300, 350 or whatever it is years ago we just need to learn, at a macro and a

micro level.

(BA22(22): male 35-44, company director, white British, 2007)





26

What these, and similar statements, do is create a self-referential statement that brooks

no critique, they are simply common sense. However, they work to justify and

reinforce the legitimacy of the speakers’ feelings and opinions and actively shut down

debate, and thus the possibility of learning. The 76% of those surveyed whose

opinions remained unaffected by the exhibitions, are comprised not only of those

African-Caribbean and Asian British visitors who came to assess the political

legitimacy of the exhibitions, but also of visitors who appear to have visited the

museum to reinforce knowledge, opinions or feelings. To what extent museum

visiting is about reinforcing a sense of self is an issue that needs further exploration.

This issue will be returned to below, as it is key to understanding the limitations of the

learning paradigm in museum studies. However, before discussing this further it is

useful to compare the results of a street survey with non-museum visitors undertaken

in the cities of Hull, Birmingham and Liverpool during 2007. Hull and Birmingham

had major museum exhibitions that marked the bicentenary, while Liverpool saw the

opening of the International Slavery Museum in that year. Interviews undertaken in

the street surveys totalled 219; the aim of the interviews was to see if the responses to

the bicentenary by non-museum visitors were the same as those we interviewed in the

museums 4. We wanted to explore if those who we interviewed in the museum had a

more or less thoughtful, mindful or critical reflection on the history the bicentenary

was marking. The survey sample was comprised of 58.9% men and 41.1% women;

the age range was slightly younger than for the museum survey, with a third being

between 25-34 years of age and 33% being over 45. The sample, as with the museum

sample, tended to favour people in socio-economic categories traditionally associated

with the middle classes (55.4% from categories 1-3), and 60% identified as white



27

British and 4.7% identified as African-Caribbean British (or black, African-British

etc). Under half, 44.3%, of visitors nominated that they had seen a museum exhibition

on the bicentenary, leaving 138 respondents who had not been to a bicentenary

exhibition. The people on the street were asked identical questions about the nature

and significance of the bicentenary to those asked in the museums. The bicentenary, it

should be noted, was extensively talked about across a range of media outlets during

2007, including television, newspapers, Internet and radio (see Wilson, 2008;

Waterton, 2010; Waterton and Wilson, 2009 for reviews of the public debate).

The question ‘is there any national significance in marking the 1807 bicentenary’ was

asked in both the museums and street surveys. In the museums, 17.4% said no, while

76% said yes, on the street 14.7% said no, and 80.6% said yes. Asked if ‘there was

any personal significance in marking the bicentenary’, 71% of those surveyed in the

museum said no, while 46.9% said no on the street. Those in the street survey tended

to see a more personal link to the bicentenary than museum-goers.

Table 3 summarizes the percentage of the various themes that emerged to the

questions ‘are there any messages about the history or heritage of Britain that you take

away from this exhibition?’ asked of museum visitors, and ‘are there any messages

about the history or heritage of Britain that you feel are created in marking the 1807

bicentenary?’.

Table 3: Messages people took from the museums or the bicentenary: columns: A.

Museum sample; B. Street sample, but had been to an exhibition in the past; C. Street

sample, but not been to an exhibition



28

A A B B C C

Frequency Percent Frequency Percent Frequency Percent

No message 227 18.9 10 14.9 9 11.5

Distancing statements 154 12.8 10 14.9 13 16.8

Information only 126 10.5 2 3.0 4 5.1

Bland unengaged

statements

122 10.1 2 3.0 0 0

Reinforced what

respondent already

knew

98 8.2 3 4.5 3 3.8

Acknowledgement of

this history

96 8.0 16 23.9 15 19.2

Message about

racism,

multiculturalism or

humanitarian message

110 9.2 4 6.0 8 8.9

Critical social

commentary

67 5.6 3 4.5 8 10.2

Reassessing identity 50 4.2 1 1.5 0 0

Took pride in

Britain’s role in

abolition

74 6.1 4 6.0 6 7.7

Revelation 21 1.7 0 0 0 0

Don’t know 57 4.7 12 17.9 12 15.4

Total (who answered 1202 100 67 100 78 100



29

question)

There are some differences between the responses to these questions from both

samples. A slightly higher percentage of museum-goers in column A saw no message

in the exhibition than those on the street, who saw no message in the bicentenary

celebrations overall. Although 10.1% of museum-goers offered bland, incurious and

unengaged statements in response to this question, this was not a response recorded in

the street survey. A further 12.8% of museum-goers in column A offered statements

that actively attempted to distance themselves from the content of the exhibition; this

refers to the use of clichés or the 5 identified self-sufficient arguments identified

above, while slightly more of those on the street (both columns B and C) offered up

these statements in response to this question in terms of the bicentenary. This is offset,

however, by the higher percentages of respondents on the street who used the

bicentenary to offer up critical social commentary (this included comments about the

occurrence of continuing slavery, lessons that could be drawn about colonialism and

imperialism, comments about current labour and immigrations laws amongst others).

It is also offset by a significantly higher proportion of those on the street (columns B

and C) who saw the bicentenary as an opportunity to acknowledge this hidden history,

as compared to those surveyed in the museums with the exhibitions in front of them.

The variations between the two samples have to be cautiously considered, however,

given the disparity of both sample sizes. Nevertheless, this comparison offers some

counter intuitive indications for assumptions made within a museum-learning

paradigm. That is, the street survey gives some indication that museum goers, on

immediately exiting an exhibition, showed no significant difference in their responses



30

to the what the bicentenary may mean for Britain than those surveyed on the street,

and who had either never been to an exhibition or had, indeed been, but at some point

distant to the time of the interview. People on the street, interestingly, were more

likely to be personally engaged in the bicentenary, and to recognize the need for

acknowledgement of this hidden history, than those surveyed at the exhibition. This

may be an artefact of the sample size, although it may also offer some indication of

the extent to which museum-goers were personally confronted by the exhibitions, and

the exhibitions’ failure to reinforce what the visitor was seeking or perhaps a failure to

provide visitors with the space or resources to constructively work through their

negative emotions.

Reinforcing and confirming: Museums and the performance of self

The idea that visitors may go to museums to seek reinforcement or legitimization of

self is one that emerges in a third body of visitor interviews. Visitor surveys asking a

similar or identical core set of questions to that used in the bicentenary survey about

messages, feelings and what visiting meant and so forth, were asked at museums and

house museums in England, Australia and the USA 5. The theme of reinforcement or

confirmation emerges organically from this data, and in response to not only the

question about changed views as noted in the 1807 data, but also to a wide range of

questions about the messages, meanings or feelings engendered by the site or

exhibition people were visiting.

The response to the question ‘has anything you have seen or heard today changed

your views about the past or present’ tended to follow a similar pattern to the 1807

bicentenary survey. The frequency at which visitors reported their views had not



31

changed at museums exhibiting labour history or the history of immigration, across all

three countries, was between 63-4%, while at house museums it ranged from 83-97%.

At other history museums and heritage sites, those who reported no change to their

views varied from 74%-87% (see note 5 for the museums and sites at which this data

was recorded).

In response to this question people noted that their views, either conservative or

progressive, were simply being reinforced by the exhibition, for instance:

It just reinforced my attitude about narrow nationalism.

(IMM012: female, 55-64, nurse, Greek-Australian, 2010)

I think it just reinforces the ideas I always had about it, it just confirms, you

know…

(IMM029: female, 35-44, mother, Australian, 2010)

Not really, just reinforced what I’ve already known.

(PM54: male, over 65, manufacturer, Italian-American, 2011)

No, I think, it just reinforced my belief in the forefathers.

(JMM12: male, 55-64, teacher, Native American, 2011)

No, not really, it has just reinforced my beliefs in what I’ve got.

(NC020: male, 55-64, veterinarian, American, 2011)



32

No, just reinforced that, the, err common myths [laughs].

Interviewer: What are the common myths, sorry?

Oh, just about Indians and the cowboys and the cavalry and, you know, the wild

open places; you see a lot of that in the art. Just endless, err, landscapes and the

wildness of the place.

(NC024: male, 45-54, education, American, 2011)

Here ideas, attitudes, beliefs, knowledge and even myths are being reinforced. This

sense of reinforcement occurs despite the fact that when presented with a list of 7-9

choices (depending on the museum) nominating their motivation to come to the

museums roughly a third chose ‘education’ or ‘to find out about’ a particular history

as a reason for the visit 6. To what extent these learning options were selected by

visitors because it was expected of them is open to speculation, certainly as one visitor

to an Australian house museum reflects when asked about the experiences she valued

on coming to the site:

I don’t know, I should say something that, you know, education, learning on a

place like this, but to be honest the experience that I’m valuing on this is just

the beauty of the place and enjoying the gardens, and having a lovely lunch,

things like that; having a nice day out.

(VH33: female, 25-34, graphic designer, Australian)

The idea of reinforcement emerged not only in response to the question about changed

views, but was in response to questions about messages, the experiences valued

during the visit and in discussing the motivation or desired outcomes of the visit:



33

Each time we come to a place like this it just reinforces what I’ve seen and just

makes me feel good to be an Australian. […] I don’t think I’ll take anything

new um [away]…at all, but it’s [my knowledge and views have] been

reinforced. Reinforcement is really what I take away.

(LR006: male, 55-64, electrician, Australian, 2010)

No not really, my knowledge and experiences were relatively similar to this

before [I visited] so I think it’s just reinforced my ideas on it already.

(NMA33: male, 25-34, teacher, Anglo-Australian, 2010)

For a short time feeling part of history, even recent history … It just brings

things home – it reinforces how you feel about the past.

(OAM85, male, over 60, accountant, white British, 2004)

Um, I don’t think I’ll take anything [ie messages] new um…at all but it’s been

reinforced. Reinforcement is really what I take away.

(LR009: male, 55-64, manager, Australian, 2010)

What is being reinforced here is identity, belonging and sense of place; for LR009 he

nominated that he had come to the museum he was visiting, which documented the

history of rural Australia, to visit ‘his ancestors’ and that when asked if he felt that he

was part of the history on display he responded: ‘Oh most certainly. I’m a fifth

generation Australian so yes, and I have…yeah, descendents who come from the land,

yes’. He took no new message from the visit, as the visit was simply about making



34

these linkages to the past. The emotional connections that people make through and to

museums, exhibitions and heritage sites cannot be ignored or dismissed. They not

only play a part in opening up or closing down enquiry and debate, as witnessed in the

interviews with visitors to the 1807 bicentenary exhibitions, but they are also often

what the visit may be about. As Poria et al (2003) observe, people go to heritage sites

to feel. Byrne (2009, 2013) also argues that people relate to the material culture of the

past through their emotions and imaginations. Failure to understand the emotive

aspects of museum visiting simply reinforces the idea that visiting is, or should

primarily be, about learning, a concept often discussed without reference to emotion.

Not only does the learning paradigm obscure the emotional aspects of museum visits

and what those visits may reinforce, it also downplays the ability of visitors to use the

museums in developing their own critical or political insights beyond that determined

by the museum curator or heritage professional. Not only were African-Caribbean

British visitors using their visit as a barometer for assessing the temperature of public

debate on racism and multiculturalism, some visitors may also use their visits to make

and assert social commentaries about the past and the present beyond those intended

by curatorial staff. For instance, visitors to industrial museums in England used the

sense to which their visit reinforced their place in history (as OAM85 is doing in the

quote above) to go on to make a range of critical and highly political observations

about class inequality in contemporary Britain. These often went well beyond the

messages embedded in the exhibitions by curatorial staff (see Smith, 2006, p.207-36).

These examples of critical visitor interplay are not adequately described by the

‘learning’ paradigm, because when visitors are making critical and political

observations they are often remembering and reinforcing their own political and



35

cultural values, values that they possessed before entering the exhibitions. The

exhibition or heritage site provides a space or the cultural tools to remember and thus

affirm those values. In this process critical insights about particular topics may be

made, and sometimes this has been possible due to something the visitor has learnt

during their visit, but more often it has occurred through a process of remembering

and affirming identity and the cultural and political values that underpins a visitor’s

sense of ‘self’. The critical acuity of visitors, along side the ability of visitors to

deflect and reject the curatorial message, not only needs further exploration, it needs

to be reassessed in terms of how museum visitors are themselves engaged in the

performance of meaning and heritage making.

Conclusion

The frameworks that assume museum visiting is about learning or education,

misunderstand the complexities of the performative nature of museum and heritage

site visiting. Falk (2009; 2011), in dismissing the idea of identity beyond the prosaic

classifications centred on motivation, misunderstands that the museum visit can be as

much about reinforcing or confirming the identities of gender, class, race or nation

that he eschews than it can be about ‘learning’. Although visitors did nominate

education as a motivation of visiting, it was not all they were doing, or even

necessarily, what they were doing, as learning in terms of the alteration of

understanding was often not a key aspect of visits. As various surveys of museum

users have noted, museums are perceived as trustworthy places (Rosenzweig and

Thelan, 1998; Ashton and Hamilton, 2003; Cameron, 2007; Conrad et al, 2009). This

issue of trustworthiness has often been signalled as indicating the sense of security the

public invests in the idea of museums as reliable sources of information for learning.



36

However, to what extent museums are seen as trustworthy sites of reaffirming a

visitor’s set of ‘known knowns’, their idea of self, the values they hold and the role of

history in underpinning identity needs further investigation.

The performative nature of museum visiting is about heritage making, as visitors are

utilizing the past in exhibitions to negotiate and make their own meanings for the

present. These meanings may or may not correlate with the intentions of the museum

and its curatorial staff. However, the meanings that are created are not necessarily

‘learnt’ from the exhibition, although they can be, but are also actively created, and

indeed recreated or reinforced, by the performance of the visit itself. This

performance, and the meanings it may create, has political and cultural consequences

that tend to be obscured in debates about ‘learning’, as learning becomes the major

output of museums, and an end in itself. De-privileging or reconsidering the nature

and prominence of the learning/educational paradigm is necessary to open up the

conceptual space needed to explore the variety of ways that visitors use both museums

and heritage sites.

Notes

1. The interview schedules used in the 1807 Commemorated project can be

viewed at

http://www.history.ac.uk/1807commemorated/audiences/audience.html, while

those used in other English and in the Australian and US contexts can be

viewed at http://archanth.anu.edu.au/heritage-museum-studies/research.



37

2. That is socio-economic categories 1-3 as used by the Office for National

Statistics, http://www.statistics.gov.uk/. These categories were determined by

asking visitors their occupation (or where relevant that of their parent/guardian

or head of household).

3. All interview data used in this chapter is referenced as follows: field number,

gender and age of respondent, self-described occupation, self-identified ethnic

identity, and year of the interview. It is important to note that occupation and

ethnicity are given as defined by the interviewee.

4. The discrepancy in the numbers between the street survey and the museum

survey occurred for two reasons, firstly the street survey was developed late in

the project and was not part of the original research design, and secondly

inclement weather forced the abandonment of the street survey.

5. Data discussed in this section comes from English country houses and

industrial/labour museums (Smith, 2006, p.128, 207); Australia : National

Museum of Australia (NMA); Stockman’s Hall of Fame (LR); Immigration

Museum, Melbourne (IMM); Old Melbourne Goal (OMG); Rouse Hill Farm,

Lanyon Homestead and Vaucluse House (house museums); USA: James

Madison’s Montpellier (JMM, house museum); National Cowboy and Western

Heritage Museum (NC); and Pequot Museum and Research Centre (PM).

Abbreviations refer to field numbers.6. The core choices are recreation, education, taking the children, did not come

specifically to see the exhibition, to find out about (topic of the exhibition), to

think about (topic of the exhibition), other. Additional reasons were added

depending on the type or aim of the exhibition, for instance, to explore what it



38

means to be Australian/American, for the experience of going to a historic

house etc.

Acknowledgements

The Australian and US research on which this chapter is based was funded by the

Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2010-14). The UK research was

funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council Knowledge Transfer Fellowship

(2007-9) and by a British Academy research grant (2004). My thanks to all the

museums, heritage centres and heritage agencies that allowed me access to their

exhibitions and sites.

LAURAJANE SMITH

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