Paper short abstract:

This presentation looks at place-making strategies and senses of emplacement of museum professionals at a “Museum of Man”. It describes how place and body are being attuned to each other through an incessant process of interpretation and practice.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation looks at the creation and experience of place from the perspective of museum professionals at a German science museum. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork including video ethnography at a popular institution I will narrate how the built environment and historical trajectories that are being situated there are being experienced through the multisensory motifs of 'coldness' and 'elegance'.

Founded on the idea that the museum is a place lived through the body, and the idea of social aesthetics within highly aestheticized communities (MacDougall) the museum professionals' (e.g. tour guides, curators and security staff) 'senses of place' are important in at least two ways:

To those who work and dwell at the museum, the historical trajectories that shape the building's architecture and atmosphere and the resulting sensory-material landscape of the museum informs their practices of "looking good" as well as their sensory and lived experiences of working at the museum. As members of a community of practice, employees learn how to embody the "elegance" expected from representatives of a prestigious cultural institution while simultaneously maintaining individual senses of place that are being expressed in notions that transcend historical, sensory and emotional categorization.

On the other side, the "elegant" bodily performance expected from of the employees becomes a crucial part of the museum environment and touristic experience for the visitors' encounter during cultural performances like "guided tours".