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Reflexive communication as a methodology of museology

Since museology draws on different theoretical tenets in different countries and regions, and is being taught within different disciplines (history, art history but also ethnography, cultural anthropology, education, information and communication sciences etc.) it seems most suitable to speak from the context (academic and professional) to which I personally belong. I would therefore like to address the issue of the museological theory in Croatia, which was developed within information and communication sciences and the way it could become more relevant for museum professionals which today, is not the case. Most museums in South-eastern Europe recruit people with the educational background in humanities, especially disciplines that take different kinds of material reality for their objects of study. This is not surprising since museums have for centuries been dealing with tangible heritage of humanity and its environment. The tangible can be seen today as a certain kind of advantage that museums have since it is what differentiates them from other cultural institutions and media that have heritage and culture in the centre of their activities (heritage films, interpretation centres, virtual museums etc.). Research of the tangible has also had a long tradition and it is, again, the thing that brings museums legitimacy as knowledge producers, resulting in public trust in museums as sources of information. The curator is the star of the museum - someone who does the research and creates exhibitions, and is today a sought-after title among students in the arts and humanities. In his book Introduction to Museology Ivo Maroević (1991), who has been regarded (rightly so) to be the leading figure in museology in Croatia, proposed a theory that gives research on museums a certain kind of autonomy from any particular sort of museum by situating it in the theory of information sciences. However, he still made museology subservient to “curator-track disciplines”, the latter of which were for him fundamental, while museology was an auxiliary discipline. In terms of documentation, information sciences have been helpful in providing practitioners with the tools for information management and retrieval, while the communication function (Mensch, 1992) has been reduced to museographic instructions on which light and temperature to use for exhibiting, what position paintings should take for better viewing and the like. In theoretical circles, however, viewing museums from the perspective of information sciences has had resonance, especially among theoreticians in the region. Unlike academics and researchers, museum professionals do not regard museology as something that might be relevant for their work, especially for conceptualising exhibitions. Similar division between the theory and the practice has been noted in contexts where tradition of museum studies draws on a critical approach. “Museum managers can often see no practical or immediate relevance of theoretical critique and seek instead to constitute a professional body of knowledge about the museum through external consultation led by marketing and others” (Dewdney, Dibosa & Walsh, 2013, p. 222). Today, marketing is thought to be the panacea for a low number of visitors (especially in countries, including Croatia, new to a market economy) and it is practiced through basic advertising and PR activities with no proper strategies that might be most appropriate for museums. In all this, the most problematic is the absence of any consideration about the educational and social role of the museum. Audience development and social inclusion are concepts that reach museums only through additional funding secured by the EU and distributed through different projects. The mission and vision for a museum (many museums do not have those statements) still resemble more the definition of the museum, and are mostly practiced as such traditional terms. The so-called fundamental disciplines and their disciplinary knowledge presented to the audience do not seem to reflect any of the issues of the current moment in society. Research has shown that, when asked about exhibitions as the museum’s basic communication activity, curators’ notions could not be further from those of museum audiences’ (Miklošević, 2015). The former describe exhibitions in professional and functional terms whereas the latter describe them in terms of their experience and relevance. Almost thirty years ago, Weil (1990) spoke about this view of museum in the light of their functional purpose instead of their purpose emphasizing that museums and museum objects need to be matched with ideas. In order to form ideas and communicate them efficiently and relevantly to visitors, production of knowledge should not be based on the current linear model curator – designer – museum educator /marketing expert where each profession works independently (Hooper Greenhill, 1999, p. 18). Rather, the entire process of communication must rely on team work with highly reflective practice of meaning-making. All those involved in the making of meanings need to question themselves about what sorts of meaning they shape and for whom, what modes and media best convey or help form those meanings, what is the power of these meanings for certain groups of people and whether they need to be counterbalanced, revised and reshaped. This is where museology could help merge different disciplines, by extending its information science methodology into communication, or more specifically into social semiotics as an approach to research that deals with the „social dimensions of meanings in any media and communication its production, interpretation and circulation, and its implications in social processes, as cause or effect” (Hodge, Semiotics, Semiotics Encyclopedia Online). Multimodal communication is even a more important term for museum communication if the museum is seen as a space where different modes and media produce meanings (Kress 2010). Museum objects within this approach are seen just as one mode, which together with other modes helps in the construction of socially and culturally particular meanings. All elements in and belonging to the museum, from the building and the space to music and voices, objects, visual material – both physical and digital – become meaning-making resources (Van Leeuwen, 2004). The mutual cooperation and the ways how to approach communication, in what media and modes and with what social messages, through what genres and discourses, become the work of a team that is bound by acts of reflexive communication in the process of creating exhibitions. The subservient museology transforms in this way into a discipline that embraces and helps other disciplines intertwine through reflexive communication. This approach also allows critical positions to be sustained not only practically but also theoretically because it necessarily entails analysis of socio-culturally shaped materials for meaning construction which include both physical (as the core of the museum and its potential advantage in the future) and digital materials (something unavoidable in communication today and tomorrow even more so). References Dewdney, A., Dibosa D., & Walsh V. (2103). Theory and Practice in the Art Museum. London: New York: Routledge. Hooper-Greenhill, E. (1999). Communication in Theory and Practice. In Eilean Hooper-Greenhill (ed.), The Educational role of the museum (28 – 43). London: New York: Routledge. Hodge, B. (n.d.). Semiotics. In Semiotics Encyclopadia Online. E.J. Pratt Library - Victoria University. Retrieved from https://semioticon.com/seo/S/social_semiotics.html Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality- a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London: New York: Routledge. van Leeuwen, T. (2004). Introducing Social Semiotics. London: New York: Routledge Maroević, I. (1998). Introduction to Museology: The European Approach. Munich: C. Müller-Straten. Miklošević, Ž. (2015). Izložba i stvaranje značenja (Exhibition and Meaning-Making). Zagreb: Muzejski dokumentacijski centar. van Mensch, P. (1992). Towards a Methodology of Museology (doctoral dissertation). Zagreb: University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Weil, S. E. (1990). Rethinking the Museum and Other Mediations. Washington: London: Smithsonian Institution Press.

museum, communication, social semiotics

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