Museums and the Lightness of Life

Authors

  • Gaynor Kavanagh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5617/nm.3339

Abstract

The concept of ‘dream space’, a term coined by Sheldon Annis in 1989, introduced the museums community to the idea that a significant element in experiencing museums is concerned with the unconscious mind. Whereas hitherto research has been directed at the cognitive and outwardly cultural, Annis’s term ‘dream space’ has prompted examination of the affective and inwardly sentient (Kavanagh 2000). To understand more of the dream space, as a phenomenon of the way museums are envisaged and engaged with, is to ask questions about our subjective selves, individually and collectively, from psychological and other viewpoints. It follows that the concept of dream space begs questions about memory, emotional make-up, psychological states, life stage, life experience, cultural norms, ethnicity and gender. And it also raises questions about core beliefs and our relationship with what might be termed a spiritual dimension, however tenuous that might be for many. 

Downloads

Issue

Section

Articles