Description
Museum Thresholds is a progressive, interdisciplinary volume and the first to explore the importance and potential of entrance spaces for visitor experience. Bringing together an international collection of writers from different disciplines, the chapters in this volume offer different theoretical perspectives on the nature of engagement, interaction and immersion in threshold spaces, and the factors which enable and inhibit those immersive possibilities.
Organised into themed sections, the book explores museum thresholds from three different perspectives. Considering them first as a problem space, the contributors then go on to explore thresholds through different media and, finally, draw upon other subjects and professions, including performance, gaming, retail and discourse studies, in order to examine them from an entirely new perspective. Drawing upon examples that span Asia, North America and Europe, the authors set the entrance space in its historical, social and architectural contexts. Together, the essays show how the challenges posed by the threshold can be rethought and reimagined from a variety of perspectives, each of which have much to bring to future thinking and design.
Combining both theory and practice, Museum Thresholds should be essential reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students working in museum studies, digital heritage, architecture, design studies, retail studies and media studies. It will also be of great interest to museum practitioners working in a wide variety of institutions around the globe.
Table of Contents
1. On a new threshold
Ross Parry, Ruth Page and Alex Moseley
PART 1: Locating and defining the threshold
2. Hysterical atria
Katherine Skellon and Ben Tunstall
3. The complexity of welcome: visitor experience at the museum threshold
Colin Mulberg
Conversation 1: The Royal Air Force Museum London
4. Design-driven innovation for museum entrances
Marco Mason
PART II: Affordances and potential of the threshold
5. Suspended: art in the threshold
Peter Ride
6. Curation at the threshold: making museum meanings through new interfaces
Angelina Russo and Philip Pond
Conversation 2: Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
7. Using 3D visualisation technology to improve design and visitor orientation
David Burden
8. Difficult Thresholds: negotiating shared and embedded entrances
Steven Kruse
PART II: The threshold rethought
9. Games in the Lobby: a playful approach
Alex Moseley and Eric Kristiansen
Conversation 3: The British Postal Museum and Archive
10. Retail Perspectives on the Threshold
Tracy Harwood
11. Setting the tone for the visit: soundscape design
Christian Hviid Mortensen and Angus Deuchars
Conversation 4: The Royal Shakespeare Company
12. The visitor as evaluator: using appraisal theory to understand ‘Threshold Fear’
Ruth Page
