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Visitor Comments as Dialogue
Author(s) -
Coffee Kevin
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
curator: the museum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2151-6952
pISSN - 0011-3069
DOI - 10.1111/cura.12017
Subject(s) - dialogic , visitor pattern , casual , narrative , negotiation , repertoire , sociology , constructive , ideology , psychology , aesthetics , visual arts , media studies , process (computing) , art , computer science , pedagogy , literature , social science , political science , politics , law , programming language , operating system
Museum use is a process of ideological negotiation, and thus museum users are active agents, not empty vessels waiting to be filled with curatorial narrative. Ensuing dialogues argue over trivia as well as important ethical issues. Discussants take up topics that range over specific public programs, the object maker's motivations and intentions, the choice of a subject, the phrasing of a caption, or the selection of objects on display. These discussions are held in hushed conversations in crowded galleries, in casual conversations within museum hallways, or with animated gestures on the front steps. In the course of this dialogic social practice, each participant's cultural repertoire is enhanced and grows. Every dialogic event is part of a socio‐cultural continuum that will engender other events, with other participants. The comments made by visitors in a visitor comment book are therefore instances of the specificities and the universality of that discussion.