Why Looking at Objects Matters

Within museum studies, there has been a recent interest in engaging withobjects and their material effects as something other than vehicles for human culturalmeaning. This article contributes to this interest by offering a philosophical argumentfor the value of close sensory engagement with physical things, an argument found inthe works of the eighteenth-century German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten(1714–1762), who is famous for fathering the modern philosophical discourseon aesthetics. Baumgarten outlines what he terms sensate thinking, defined as an analogueto rational thinking, and insists that this form of thinking can be analyzed andsharpened according to its own rules. I discuss how Baumgarten’s aesthetics might beuseful for how the curator approaches objects in exhibitions and for understanding howvisitors’ sensory engagement with the objects can be important beyond the decipheringof historical narratives and conceptual meanings.