What is ‘the real thing’ in the museum? An interpretative phenomenological study

Abstract

This article describes a study of the different ways museum visitors understand their experience of the real thing (TRT) in the museum context. Many professionals and scholars claim that the uniqueness of the museum -in relation to other leisure and educational experiences and offerings -centers on being the keepers of 'real things.' Having an insight into the visitor perspectives of what they consider real is important and relevant to museum professionals as well as other cultural heritage workers as it can assist them to better respond to visitor experiences of TRT. The study used an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach to inquire into the qualitatively different ways of understanding the experience of TRT in the museum. The research resulted in four ways of understanding an experience of TRT in museums: through aspects of the self, in relation to others, through the presence of the actual physical thing, and through one's surroundings.

Museum spaces and experiences for children – ambiguity and uncertainty in defining the space, the child and the experience

“…Yet Hewitt also fears a consumerist children-in-museums culture, worrying that exhibits might be, for children, […] brought down to the kids' level […] in much the same way as they think of Disneyland or Hamleys or the kids channels on TV: something adjusted to their needs when they were kids, and therefore to be left behind as quickly as possible, as they head towards adulthood. (2014) These kinds of cultures, then, are seemingly trivial and impermanent and quite disconnected from the real and significant stuff of museums (Latham 2015). Yet, in a sense, Hewitt echoes something suggested by Aitken -the burden of children's 'being' children is a weight of 'responsibility and separateness' (Aitken 2008, 19).…”

The Wonders of the Augsburg Cabinet: Three Ways of Experiencing a Document

“…My goals for this project were threefold: 1) to explore a new approach to "the real thing" (TRT) research (Latham, 2015), 2) to learn something about experiencing a single document in different contexts, and 3) to try a new methodological approach on an ongoing inquiry. Taking an auto-hermeneutic approach (Gorichanaz, 2017) to data collection, on March 4, 2018 I visited the cabinet for the second time in less than two years.…”

“…Table 1. Short summaries of the four Ways of Experiencing the Real Thing in the Museum from Latham (2015).…”

“…Ways of Experiencing TRT (Latham, 2015) Self This activity, it turns out, was itself analysis. It did help me to reflect on the experiences in interesting ways, but the only real results were that I had a lot more to say about the live gallery experience, which was not a surprise since that is where I spent the most time and made the longest recording.…”

“…Auto-hermeneutics is "a systematic way to explore and describe the ontological nature of one's own lived experiences" (Gorichanaz, 2017, p. 3), a study of the self and a unique approach to building an understanding of phenomena of interest to information science. It reaches squarely into those in-the-moment experiences of which Kari spoke. At the same time, I wanted to take my research (Latham, 2015) on "the real thing" (TRT) in museums to another level. In that study, I found that adult visitors to museums perceived "real" in this context in multiple ways and that there is more than one way to understand what is perceived as real in the museum.…”