Right on, Linda!

Your review and analysis of the Museum of Sydney (MOS) reminds me a little
of an "object-rich" (as the designers called it) installation in an eastern
national park in the US a few years back.  The local staff had to devise a
guide-pamphlet so visitors could make some sense of all the "pretties."

First and last, meaning comes from context.  While the destruction of
accustomed contexts can lead to unaccustomed understandings of
relationships previously hidden, it can be a jolting experience.  A whole
museum of such postmodern tectonic shifts would become wearing on the
nervous system and discourage recreational visitation...just too damn much
work!

Perhaps the problem you perceive is a lack of orientation...lack of a
threshold at which you can get your bearings and learn how this thing is
laid out and what your role as visitor is to be.  The same need has come up
in discussing tours presented in a style appropriate to a Native American
culture, in contrast to the usual tourguide approach ("tell 'em what you're
gonna tell 'em; tell 'em; and tell 'em what you told 'em).  Visitor
comprehension, and appreciation, would be aided at the outset by an
explanation that the experience will be different than they may have
expected in the following ways.  Then they won't find themselves going to
Norfolk when they thought they were on a train to Richmond.

I'm glad to see this thread moving toward the issue of interpretation in
museums generally, rather than just art museums.  We've been hosting an
exhibit of textiles that leaves me cold (not just because of the 65 degree
temperature in the gallery!).  It is impressive and analytical, but it is a
collector's exhibit, one at which you ooooh and aaaaah and say "how big!,"
"how rare," or "how colorful," but one searches in vain for the human
element to connect with.
It sounds like MOS, too, forgot to start with where the visitor is
(Tilden's first principle of interpretation).

Tom Vaughan
The Waggin' Tongue

Tom Vaughan

The Waggin' Tongue