The Constructivist Museum
Constructivism has a particular appeal to the educational work of cultural institutions
because it matches the informal, voluntary nature of most learning associated
with museums. However, its application to museum education presents a number of
particular challenges.
Exhibitions
If the educational intention of museum exhibitions is to facilitate visitor meaningmaking,
then this has a profound impact on the nature of exhibitions and how they
are conceptualized and constructed. Most obviously, if the goal is to facilitate visitors’
opportunities to reach their own understandings, then the authoritative curatorial
voice needs to be muted and modified. Museums have addressed this issue in
a variety of ways, including by providing several different interpretations of an object
or exhibit or by encouraging visitors to add their comments. Some exhibitions have
incorporated visitor comments into the exhibition space and a few art museums have
even encouraged visitors to add their own labels to displayed works (Nashashibi
2002). Other strategies have included posing provocative questions to visitors, rather
than answers; or seeking to upset linear or chronological representation.
Creating exhibitions that do not assume curatorial authority has also involved
a greater range of people in exhibition development (Roberts 1997). This includes
not only museum educators but also the expansion of visitor research and “frontend”
(i.e. prior to exhibition completion) evaluation, as well as efforts to involve
the community (see chapter 11). There have also been some radical experiments,
involving engagement between particular social groups and other visitors in the
museum, such as Heinecke’s Dialogue in the Dark (Heinecke and Hollerbach 2001)
Museum Education
347
in which visitors enter totally dark spaces to be guided by docents who have low
vision.