Chapter 2: The Mediumofthe Museum 2.1 MuseumSpaceand the ‘ Ideal’ Visitor Howdohistory museumsapproachthe past?AleidaAssmann – partiallydrawing on themuseum analysis of Rosmarie Beier-deHaan – differentiates betweenthree typesofhistoricalrepresentationsofmemory: narrating, exhibiting,and staging (2007, 149 – 153).¹ Narrating referstothe narrativesemantics of ahistoricalrepre- sentation that ascribes meaning, importance,and direction to thenarratedevents. Exhibiting refers to theplacement of historicaltexts,images, andobjects in space, whichisfar less sequential andcausalthannarrating andallowsfor effectsofsi- multaneity.Finally,staging thepastisdivided into thecategories of media staging, particularly throughfilmand moving images,and spatialstaging,which Assmann mainly relatestoauthentic heritage spaces that allowfor imaginativere-experienc- ingorperformative simulationsofthe past.However,Assmann’sanalysisisnot specific enough to help us understand theparticularitiesofthe mediumofthe ‘museum’ (or exhibitions in museum space).Inher chart – whichisdivided into basicrepresentationalmodes,media,and format – themuseumasa‘format’ only appearstobeconnectedtothe mode of exhibiting,whereas ‘medial staging’ relatestodocumentary andhistoricalfilm, and ‘spatialstaging’ to memorial sites andreenactmentsofhistory (2007, 154). WhileAssmann’stypology, terms andstructuraldescriptions of ‘staged’ public historyare slantedtoward theproductionsites of narratives,museum exhibitions, or performances,narratologistshavebroadened thesubject-matterofnarratology to culturalrepresentations in general(seee.g.Nünning andNünning 2010). Ans- garNünning hasshown howthe focusonworld-making allows forthe discussion of historiographic narrativeinthe much widercontexts of mediaand discourse theory,ifone,for example, sees “events,stories,and storyworldsasdiscursively created, medially represented, culturallyspecificand historically mutablecon- structs” (Nünning 2010,206). To applythistoanunderstanding of representational formsand storyworldsofhistory museumsand thespecifics of themuseum as me- dium thepotentialvisitormustbetaken into account – at leastasmuchasthe motivation andintentional design of theexhibitioncreators. Thequestionof whethermuseums canbereadlikeatexthas caused considerable debate,partic- ularly amongnarratologists andsemioticiansonthe onehand, andmuseumstud- In German erzählen, ausstellen,and inszenieren. OpenAccess. ©2020 Stephan Jaeger,published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110664416-006 2.1 MuseumSpace and the ‘Ideal’ Visitor 41 iesscholarsand museum practitioners on theother.Incomparisontoamore gen- eralreaderresponsetheorythatrelatestotextual media, one must here askwhat specific role thevisitorhas in history museums’ representations, narrations,stag- ing, andsimulations of thepast? What does it mean when thevisitormoves throughspace andspatialarrangements, in comparison to thereaderofabook whomustimagine thespacesbeing narrated? Space in museums can also be described through anarratological approach that has recentlyemerged: ‘narrative geography.’ Marie-Laure Ryan, Kenneth Foote, and Maoz Azaryahu define spaceasdenoting “certain key characteristics of the environments or settingswithin which characters live and act: location, position arrangement,distance, direction, orientation, and movement” (2016, 7). Regarding this concept,the museum functions as acoreexample for spatial narrativemedia. However,its discussion does not explain the specificity of mu- seum narrativesinspace, beyond the general observation thatmuseums speak to the visitor’sdifferent senses. After the authorsexplain numerous possibilities of how narrative can playarole in spatial museum design, their chapter on “mu- seum narrative” goes on to explore fairlybroad spatial storylines in narrative- based museums, narrative architecture in history museums, and the framing of museum narrativesthrough beginningsand endings. Finally, Ryan et al. arguethat the museum’smain characteristic in terms of narrative geography can be found in its differencefrom landscape narratives: “the possibility to de- sign the exhibit along acirculation path that accords with astoryline and narra- tive progression” (2016,203). However,evenifmemorial sites deal with the phys- ical conditions that they find in pre-existing buildings or landscapes, the complexity of museum representation is clearlyrestricted through numerous dis- cursive and political conditions. The complexity of demands made by the archi- tectural design, the design firm itself, museumstakeholders, marketing pres- sures,lobbyists who want their themes represented, local and national politicians, and the press are such that one wonders how freemuseums actually are to narrate space. Anarratological theory of space derivedmainlyfrom cate- gories that have been developed for the literaryanalysis of fictional texts seems to fall short in explaining narrative and space within the museum. To explain the relationship of museum and space, Daniel Tyradellisidenti- fies exhibitions with “thinkinginspace” (2014, 134–159). Kirshenblatt-Gimblett notes that “[e]xhibitions are fundamentallytheatrical, for they are how muse- ums perform the knowledge they create” (1998, 3). Similarly, HeikeBuschmann follows Michel de Certeauinreading ‘space’ as the resultofthe interaction be- tween aperson and the structural condition provided in the three-dimensional ‘place’ (2010,162– 163). Thisacknowledgesthat the museum needs the entity of the recipient to actualize or performits space, and furthermore, that it is nec- 42 2The Mediumofthe Museum essary to understand the role of the visitor in space and to illustrate the poietic and performative nature of museum exhibitions, in analyzinghow exhibitions represent the past.Poiesis – aprominent concept in the historiographical theo- ries of Hayden White (1987: 42;see also Jaeger 2011, 33 – 34) and Paul Ricœur (1984–85, I: 52–87) – means that the past onlybecomes reality through the act of representation or narration. This is particularlyevident in the medium of the museum, wherethe museum first creates aspatial arrangement of objects, images, texts,and scenes;and secondly, it requires the (active) perception of vis- itors to completethe process of experientiality and fill the shell of the exhibition. This second element surpasses White’sand Ricœur’suse of the term, wherein they emphasize the poietic potential of historiographic narrative. To understand this aspect of the museum visitor’srole, Mieke Bal’scompar- ison between visitors of the theater and of art exhibitions proves helpful: “In- stead of standingstill in front of an imaginary stage, as in theater,the visitor now walks through aforest of objects. Andinstead of being aspectator of the play, she is now aco-narrator,fulfilling in her own waythe script thatpredeter- mines the parameters within which the story can be told” (2008, 20,see also 1996,2–4). Bal’sapproach emphasizes the dynamics thatamuseum visitor can perform in space, by zoominginand out like afilm camera, from long shot to aclose-up and vice versa (2008, 26).² Similarly, RosmarieBeier-de Haan’sdiscussion of stagingasanintegralpart of ‘new museology’ helps in de- fining the specifics of the museum as medium. Traditionally, museumshavetried to createexhibitions that positioned the visitor as adetached observer(2006, 192).Aspart of ‘new museology,’ [v]iewers arenow drawn intothe ensemble of exhibited objects, no longer able to assume the positionofdetached museum-goers hoveringaboveoroutside the exhibition. The view- ers and their potential perceptions arenow takenintoaccount; they become part of the en- semble and are challengedtoexpress their own perceptions,judgments,and emotions. (Beier-deHaan 2006,192– 193) Suzanne MacLeod also pointsout both how the visitor’sindividual use and ex- perience of space surpasses anyintentional approaches that architects,interior designers,and curators in developing specific effects of space and architecture: In the museum then, arangeofusers – professionals,researchers, families,tourists,organ- ized groups, repeatvisitors and so on – must also be recognized as continuallyremaking the architectureofthe museum through the uses to which it is put.Such uses are, to agreat extent of course, closelycontrolled by the individual and organizational visions of museum See the discussionof‘historical distance’ below. 2.1 MuseumSpaceand the ‘Ideal’ Visitor 43 spacedominant at anyparticular moment.This said, most of us could probablycall to mind amemory of amuseum spacesuddenly transformed through the uses to which it was put, even if it did return to its established character with its requisitespatial practices soon af- terwards. (MacLeod 2005,20) In the museumcontext,design (the planning and buildingofamuseumspace) and reception (bythe visitors who fill the space with their own expectations, de- cisions, and reactions) cannot be completelyisolated from one another.Another concept utilizing space is assemblagetheory.Itsurpasses the agency and inten- tional authorship of the museum planners and of the visitor and looks at as- semblages or clusters that constitutediscursive meanings in which the museum emerges(Macdonald 2013,5–7). Adam Muller highlights the “dynamic interac- tion /intersection of overlapping clusters of objects, spaces,ideologies,memo- ries, feelings, structures,histories,and experiences” (2019). Understood as ‘as- semblages,’ these clusters are