The Multi-media Museum: The 1960s–70s

This chapter discusses the spreading of film projections and other multi-media and interactive devices in museum galleries in the 1960s–70s, due to the advent of video and technological innovations that rendered these machines more easily available, as well as to the growing importance accorded to the visual design of exhibitions. The chapter also focuses on the curatorial debate about several key issues. It addresses the relationships between museums and their visitors, and the role of multi-media in shaping their interactions. The chapter analyses a seminar held in 1967 by Marshal McLuhan and Harley Parker. In this meeting with museum professionals, the famous communication theorist discussed emerging trends in the communication strategies of museums, which included the role of audio-visual and multi-media devices.

From the Museum Experience to the Museum as an Experience

This chapter discusses a major trend in contemporary museology: the delivering of “experiences” as the main aim of the exhibitions. It argues that today museums seek to affect visitors rather than to inform them. Their role is therefore no longer that of repositories of collections, but rather that of performative spaces with a strong narrative component. The chapter analyses the curatorial debate about the “experiential” museum, with particular attention to the role of audio-visuals in shaping this trend.

Touching Images

This chapter discusses a number of audio-visual interactive devices in which the movement of the images plays a crucial role. In many contemporary museums, there are few press-buttons devices or objects to be touched or handled. Rather, visitors have to touch moving images themselves, whose surface acts as an interface between the spectator and the representation. The technological component is thus concealed in favour of a seemingly “natural” interaction. Interactive tables, which are widespread in museums today, are an emblematic example of this tendency: the chapter analyses relevant cases, such as the interactive table at the Churchill Museum (London, UK).

New Interpretations of the Movie Theatre

In the case studies analysed in this chapter, the configuration of museum architecture and exhibition design is influenced by the “classic” cinematic dispositive and its components (screen, dark room, projection, seated spectators). One of the main case studies is the Big Pictures Show, an audio-visual show that takes place in the main exhibition space of the Imperial War Museum North (Manchester, UK). During the show, the space becomes a screen on which multi-projection documentary films are displayed, creating an immersive environment.

A Walk through Images

In the museums analysed in this chapter, cinema could be understood as a model for the very conception of the exhibition space. The chapter argues that, in some relevant cases, museum narrative could be compared to film narrative, not only because they both unfold in time following a “script”, but also because the first employs, thorough its own media­ specific means, filmic techniques such as montage, zooms, close­ups, as well as a complex articulation of the story and characters. The case studies include the Trento Tunnels (Trento, Italy), two former highway tunnels reconverted into a museum, where film and photographs were projected on the curved walls and on the floor, and where, in a kind of “film in reverse”, it was the visitors’ movement that created a montage between the images.

The Museum and its Spectres

This chapter analyses a number of exhibitions that include ghostly apparitions of historical figures, in a modern and high-tech version of the 18th and 19th century Phantasmagoria. This kind of solution is particularly common in history and memory museums, where audio-visual projections of historical characters or testimonies appear, like spectres, to tell their story to visitors. The chapter analyses some relevant case studies, which include Peter Greenaway’s Peopling the Palaces, an artistic audio-visual installation in the historical site of Venaria Reale, in Italy. These kind of audio-visual exhibition strategies create evocative and impressive experiences, intensifying the emotional impact of the exhibitions and the visitors’ involvement.

Audio-visuals in Exhibitions

This chapter offers, through a series of examples from different kinds of museums, an overview of the types of audio-visuals they use: found footage materials, educational films, documentaries, video testimonies. Also, it discusses their museological functions: there are used for their pedagogical value, as means of contextualization, or to create spectacular effects.

Moving Images in Museums, World’s Fairs and Avant-garde Exhibition Design

This chapter considers the reciprocal influences between the presentations of museums and commercial and industrial fairs, from which curators have sometimes admitted having drawn inspiration. These close-knit exchanges between apparently distant worlds show that museums, far from being isolated and timeless institutions, were able to intercept the latest developments in display techniques. Museums used audio-visuals not only for educational purposes and to preserve memory, but also to attract a wider public and to keep up with the dynamic nature of modernity. This issue is discussed with specific reference to two case studies: the 1920s European Avant-Garde exhibition design, and the use of educational films in the galleries of the New York Museum of Science and Industry.

Cinema, Museums, Memory and Education

In the first decades of the twentieth century, film was considered an ideal medium for the preservation of memory and was rapidly included among the educational means used in museums. This chapter explores the ways in which films and moving images were used in museums as educative tools, and how they were shown to visitors, in auditoriums or in galleries. This chapter also discusses how, in addition to their educational role, films responded to the museum’s need to keep up with the times and to show that the museum was a ‘living’ organism, attentive to the demands of a modern and urban public and ready to fit in the dynamics of city life, with its growing number of attractions and forms of entertainment.

Conclusions

This chapter runs through the main arguments of the book and traces the conclusions, arguing that not only audio-visuals can be incorporated in exhibitions, but exhibitions can also be structured according to cinematic principles, or be influenced by the configuration of the “classic” cinematic dispositive. Moreover, moving images play a key role in shaping the relationships between visitors and the museum. The cinematic component should thus be understood as a “structural element” of contemporary museum exhibitions, rather than as an extrinsic component.