Claudia and Elizabeth have sensitively raised an ever-fascinating
conundrum.  For what it's worth, here's one old interpreter's take on the
subject.

        We have a choice of media for sharing information.  Each choice has
its own implications.  A masterful treatise on, say, banana pitters may be
a documentation of a scholar's work, understandings, and conclusions in a
form available to anyone else who is interested in banana pitters, their
use, and technology.  The treatise may justifiably be a monumental work of
that scholar.

        Exhibits, on the other hand, should not become monuments to
curators.  If our goal in an exhibit is to "teach the visitor all we know,"
without consideration of the visitor's interests, then I think we run the
risk of creating just such a monument, one which does not serve the public
interest (and investment) as described in the previous posts.

        IF (and I emphasize that) the purpose of the exhibit is to lead the
viewer to an understanding of an exhibit topic that is somehow different
than the understanding they brought to the exhibit, then I think we have to
frame our goals in visitor-oriented terms.  A goal of presenting everything
a curator has learned on a subject in a fashion that will be acclaimed by
the curator's professional colleagues seems an exercise in self-adulation
and leaves the visitor as a convenient pawn...an excuse to do the exhibit
but no more than that.

        In ironically impenetrable language, Ian Hodder, in "Interpretive
Archaeology and Its Role" (American Antiquity, 56[1], 1991, pp. 7-18),
accused the profession of anthropology of speaking only to itself, with the
result that its intellectual operations were closed to other segments of
society and thought, denying the profession of other points of view that
might affect conclusions.  Other professions are surely as characterized by
a "priesthood," "liturgical language," and a process of inculcation that
separates novitiates gradually from the unwashed masses.  Exhibits can
offer a bridge back to the people who might want to know what they're
paying for.

        Using the conceptual framework of interpretation, the exhibit needs
to start with the visitor.  Freeman Tilden's first (and, to me, most
important of six) principle of interpretation is:  "Any interpretation that
does not somehow relate what is being displayed or described to something
within the personality or experience of the visitor will be sterile."
("Interpreting Our Heritage," and quoted in other places.)

        Yale Historian Robin Winks was more succinct a few years ago in his
"Public Historian" review of a half-dozen "guides to the roadside history
of......"  He said those wayside exhibits have to answer the visitor's
question:  "So what?"  Perhaps our museum exhibits need to be held to the
same standard, implying visual or auditory attraction, relationship of the
content to the visitor's experience (Tilden's First), setting the topic in
a thematic context, and relating the significance of this topic or object.

        Perhaps we should view exhibits as topical emissaries for our
professional interests (as contrasted with our personal professional
achievements).  For example, I want the Civilian Public Service (CPS)
program and camps to be remembered as part of  World War II and of the much
longer American history of respect for conscience.  As a person with
cultural resource management experience, I am painfully aware that what few
physical vestiges remain of a program purposefully hidden from public view
are fast disappearing.  Appreciation of CPS (or the Enola Gay, or Freud) as
a part of our heritage relies on another maxim (?) quoted by Tilden:
"Through interpretation, understanding; through understanding,
appreciation; through appreciation, protection."  Folks aren't going to
appreciate what we're about until they can understand it and relate it to
their own lives.

For whom do we work?  The public.  Museums are institutions of public
trust.  We preserve information in various forms (including its embodiment
in objects) for its potential to enlighten.  Was it George Brown Goode who
defined a museum as "a consultative library of objects?" To serve the folks
who pay for it, this "library" should have introductory material as well as
the advanced theoretical works.

I apologize for the length; it seemed appropriate to the topic.  I look
forward to following this thread.

Tom V.

Tom Vaughan                    \_   Cultural
The Waggin' Tongue             \_    Resource
[log in to unmask]             \_     Management,
11795 County Road 39.2             \_       Interpretation,
Mancos, CO 81328 USA                \_       Planning, &
      (970) 533-1215                            \_       Training