Contextualization: The Museum Effect

In my History and Theory of Museums class we have been discussing contextualization of artifacts. How when you remove an object from its natural surrounding (context) and place it in a museum you are giving the object an entirely different contextualization. After talking about it and writing it down as I just did, it seems elementary to what we do as museums, but I’d never really thought about it that way before. It brings up several interesting points about learning in museums.

Referred to as, “The Museum Effect” in the article Museums as a Way of Seeing by Svetlana Alpers, it includes three main parts.

Museums:
1) Take an artifact or work of art out of its original context.
2) Kill the object’s social purpose (why it was or what it was used for).
3) Put objects into a new context, i.e. museums take cultural objects and turn them into art objects.

Take for instance a religious alter. It is a social/cultural object kept within a church/chapel etc. It is a practical object used as a place to worship and pray, but when removed and placed in a museum its social purpose is dead, it becomes purely aesthetic. With small exception, artifacts in museums are NOT used; a person does not go up to a religious alter on display in a museum and kneel to pray. Typically in a museum setting, this artifact will become an art object; people will view and appreciate it for its inherent beauty i.e. intricate wood or stone work.