Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window), Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window), in an article published on Art Museum Teaching, Education and digital practices at the museum, Talking to Dr. Andreas Bienert at the EVA [Electronic Media & Visual Arts] conference, Storytelling and telling stories in the museum, Licence Creative Commons Attribution - Partage dans les Mêmes Conditions 2.0 France. Regardless of whether it is there in the first place, visitors always reconstruct some kind of narrative which will impact the meaning-making process. Indeed, in the immersive model, the art exhibited is not a “mute” or “third person,”[13] but a firsthand experience/voice for the visitor. However, when visiting a museum ‘we never go to read the whole thing, certainly not all at once’[17], instead we notice things incidentally[18]. [37] Paul John Eakin goes a step further, stating that we create our identity through self-narration. [39] Bruner argues that “we seem to have no other way of describing ‘lived time’ save in the form of a narrative.”[40] To him, criteria for self-narration exist but they are unstable, which “makes life stories highly susceptible to cultural, interpersonal, and linguistic influences.”[41] For Bruner, it is our whole reality that is built on narratives. We find this type of narrative used in historical exhibitions, for example, that present a specific historical event in a diachronic manner. [38] Young and Saver reinforce this argument; to them, memory, self, and narratives are intrinsically linked. Museums have long used narratives as a way to communicate with their public. When the narrative embraces the imaginary as an intrinsic part of museum design, there is the capacity to allow for multiple readings of space promoting recurrent engagement by the visitor[15]. A critical assessment of epistemic, sociocultural, or psychic assumptions, Phase 4. [29] Kay Young and Jeffrey Saver, “The Neurology of Narrative,” SubStance 30 (2001): 72–84. However, to Jarvis, visitors cannot make meaning alone: they need a social interaction to be enabled as a learner. [37] Oliver Sacks, “The Lost Mariner,” The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales (New York: Summit Books, 1985), 22–41. It is suggested that information not structured narratively is more likely to be forgotten[3]. People are ‘natural storytellers’[1], and engage with narratives as a way to create and interpret culture and identity and ensure their place within human society[2]. These three overarching elements—that we think in and through narrative, that we remember in narrative, and that narratives are central to the construction of our reality and identity—have consequences when we look at the impact of exhibitions on museum visitors. [20] Bar-On, D., ed. [32] Abbott, The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 2–3. The final, overarching element, and a consequence of the two previous elements, is that narratives construct our identity (or identities) as well as our reality. For the first 4 issues of Stedelijk Studies students of the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam produced new photographs. For issue 8 of Stedelijk Studies photos by Luca Penning were selected. However, Kolb argues that, despite those preferences, several stages should be covered for the learning cycle to be complete: active experimentation (doing), concrete experience (feeling), reflective observation (watching), and abstract conceptualization (thinking). But why do narratives work as a mediation strategy for museums? The way a museum may editorialize personal stories is also central to this issue. [53] While Mezirow’s theories have evolved, we chose to use for this article the initial ten phases theory. ( Log Out / To him, narrative “operates as an instrument of mind in construction of reality” (ibid., 6). In “Act 6: spurring the experiential,” Roppola describes how experience has become an entry point for the visitor. On the other hand, if the approach of the museum exhibition is discursive, the experience of the museum enters the visitor’s narrative in parallel to the visitor’s own, as a story that can be critically assessed, as a discourse that can be analyzed. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie explains that we are too often presented with a single story and find ourselves complicit in accepting this single story as a truth. Through this theoretical exploration, we hope that the implications of some core aspects of narrative theories on learning in a museum context will emerge and give new perspectives that can further be explored in the field.[15]. The museum is then in the position of a narrative collector, analyst, and presenter. [online] Available at http://www.foeromeo.org/conferences-etc/can-an-exhibition-be-a-story [Accessed 24 February 2015]. [51] “The research base for the concept evolved out of a comprehensive national study of women returning to community colleges in the United States (Mezirow, 1978). Stereotypes are, for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the main consequence of single stories. Within the museum, narrative exists ‘as an open-ended means to connect with people’[10] calling on the imagination of the active participant. This puts into question constructivist approaches to exhibition design. Storytelling is inherently linked to power and power relations. As Ferguson argues, in art exhibitions “the idea that meanings are impossibly unstable is embraceable because inevitable. [14] Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986); Bruner, “Life as Narrative,” Social Research 71, no. But this experience will most likely enter the visitor’s narrative without giving the visitor an opportunity for critical thinking or analytical engagement with the material the museum presents. [7] This article focuses on this specific definition of learning, as it is particularly suitable for art museums where bodies and emotions are highly engaged in the learning process. Without the visitor, the interaction is incomplete. Others have challenged Kolb’s theory as too simple to capture the entire learning process, for example, Peter Jarvis, “Learning to be a Person in Society,” in Illeris, Contemporary Theories of Learning, 23. Narrative theory, we believe, is an interesting and underused interdisciplinary tool for looking at museums, and learning in museums in particular. In “Act 4: a participatory repertoire,” Roppola describes the development of hands-on, participatory, and visitor-centered museums. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. The study used grounded theory methodology to conduct intensive field of study of students […] A transformative learning movement subsequently developed in North American adult education […].” Jack Mezirow, “An Overview of Transformative Learning,” in Lifelong Learning: Concepts and Contexts, eds. Interactive contents that facilitate the understanding of the message. We also established that immersive and discursive modes of exhibition seem rather equivalent or complementary in the way they promote learning, and we can already quite confidently say that a hybrid exhibition environment with some immersive parts and discursive parts seems to be an ideal museum learning environment. – that’s how it is!,” or more recently, with the implementation of more open forms of museum discourses, “is it how it is?,”[12] the contemporary art immersive exhibition takes a different discursive position exhorting the visitor to feel rather than solely look. [10] “Elles cherchent à mobiliser les sensations et des visiteurs en les integrant dans des univers propices à la reception des messages du contenu de l’exposition.” Florence Belaën, “Les expositions d’immersion,” Lettre de l’OCIM 86 (2003): 27 (all translations in this article are by the author). “Using the 4MAT System to Bring Learning Styles to Schools,” Educational Leadership (1990): 31–37; see also Susan Weil and Ian McGill, eds., Making Sense of Experiential Learning: Diversity in Theory and Practice (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1989). This has, I believe, evolved since 1996, and the focus is now generally on participatory practices, open interpretations and co-creation opportunities. Based on narrative theory, we concluded that visitors in museums always reconstruct a narrative, and that this narrative is essential in the meaning-making, understanding, and remembering process of the museum material (that is in every step of the learning process). Based on narrative theory, we also concluded that immersive and discursive exhibition models have a very different impact on the visitor’s narrative perception and creation. The first overarching element that we find in most theories is that human beings think in narratives and through narratives by using and understanding specific patterns, structures, motifs, etc. During our transmedia storytelling workshops, many participants referenced collaborative programs including storytelling, in which museums would invite locals to share their own experience of an event, their own perceptions of an artwork, and so on. A visit to an immersive installation becomes something that has happened to the visitor as an individual: it has entered the visitor’s own self-narrative. For example, according to Aristotle, a narrative is expected to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Art exhibitions are, as Ferguson emphasizes, “narratives which use art objects as elements in institutionalized stories that are promoted to an audience.”[16] Tiina Roppola further stresses that “story, or narrative, is the vehicle of choice for channeling the content of the museum, with its absence disconcerting to visitors.”[17] If we look at the different “acts” of the history of exhibition design described by Roppola, we can see that narratives, while used in a range of ways, are a constant presence in museum mediation strategies. As Roppola states: Whether consciously or unconsciously, exhibitions materially express a discursive stance. Our approach to narrative theory is therefore interdisciplinary and, to some measure, a constructivist approach. If we accept Jerome Bruner’s position that narratives define human identities and reality, then immersive experiences in museums change who we are as visitors.