2020 | Building Peace through Heritage
“ Multi-contextuality ” of the archaeological find : from exhibition design to museum education
Maria Desirée Vacirca 1
1
Accademia Belle Arti di Palermo ( ABAPa ), mdvacirca @ gmail . com mobile + 39.3358220744 , + 39.091344434
Abstract : The study aims to investigate the complex relationship , established in archaeological museums and in site-museums between the exhibition , designed by the exhibitions ’ architects and visitors ’ interpretation assigned to the communicators . This interpretation , intermediated by museum educational program , is based on the assumption that a museum object has the potential to express multiple meanings . Thus , this so-called polysemanticity , peculiar to the item , requires a complex process of interpretation , which depends on the previous knowledge of the visitor , but the first cannot rely completely on the second . It is therefore crucial for a museum to be structured as a real “ media machine ” from the beginning , expressing itself through an exhibition design with a ‘ storytelling ” approach , connected with the personal perceptive and cognitive experience of each visitor : from perceptive capacities , related to the aesthetic experience of looking , to those of learning , from emotions to sensory perceptions . In order to achieve this goal , the museum has to deal with the intrinsic potential of its museum items , and , in particular , of its archaeological finds . Thus , the museum has to develop the ability to transmit semantic and multilayered values , taking in consideration the multi-contextual nature of the findings . Nevertheless , it should be said that the classification and interpretation carried out by curators and exhibitions ’ architectural designers usually reflect a partial view , which debases the polysemanticity of the museum object .
Keywords : interpretation , presentation , exhibition , storytelling .
Introduction
The complexity of a valid process in the creation of a museum project , as has already been amply discussed elsewhere ( Ruggieri Tricoli M . C . and Vacirca , M . D ., 1998 ), derives essentially from the fact that what is needed is not only to conserve , but also exhibit and show , and connect the things to a story ( Ibidem , p . 176 ).
This means , on the one hand , to know how to transform the guarded memory in the museums into an “ exposed memory ” and on the other hand , to have specific objectives to achieve efficacy of communication also on different levels of attention and competence ( Ibidem , p . 178 ), being careful to establish a correct and fruitful relationship between the two different communicative planes ( Cecconi , L . and Olmetti Peja , D ., 2004 , p . 139 ) of the museum display . That is , a communicative apparatus and educational communication , given that the choice of a particular type of museum display can be strongly conditioned by the museum message and obviously , also with regard to the overall interpretation of the object in the museum context .
To establish a relationship between the two planes in question means , in other terms , to succeed in creating a dialogue between them , beginning with the fundamental assumption that they are distinct but above all strictly interdependent .
Entrusting to an effective linguistic metaphor , Emma Nardi affirms that reading museums with the aim of teaching is an activity which derives from a dual operation : the selection of semantic elements -the
235