Visiting the Visitor: An Enquiry into the Visitor Business in Museums

The study of the museum visitor has undergone a radical transformation. This collection brings together imaginative research that encourages new conclusions. Some questions involve the visitor's identity, what she brings to her museum experience. Can we gain entry into this experience? Does more technology really increase access to the objects themselves? Others probe the very nature of museum-going and exhibition making, demanding that we reexamine the traditional exhibition to reposition the visitor and her meaning-making at the center. Each author here has asked unfamiliar questions and responded with fresh answers.

Ann Davis is a retired museum director and university professor in Calgary, Canada.

Kerstin Smeds is a historian and professor of museology at Umeå University, Sweden.