Paper Short Abstract:

This paper draws on exhibitions and exhibition-making to develop a reflection on how an analytical focus on emotions might cast light on aspects of museum practice and museum experience that resist being written about, and put into question pre-formed expectations and rules in museums.

Paper Abstract:

The paper develops a reflection on how an analytical focus on emotions might cast light on aspects of museum practice and museum experience that resist being written about, and put into question pre-formed expectations and rules in museums.

For instance, exhibitions are by definition designed, curated and scripted spaces. However, the emotional responses of visitors cannot be fully anticipated nor controlled.

The paper explores this interface between curatorial intervention and audience agency and proposes emotions (their overwhelming power, radical subjectivity and unpredictability) as tools to unwrite museums’ prescriptive and pre-scripted codes.