Curating a feeling: Museums and affect

Abstract

Emotions play a vital role in forming meaning within a museum setting. They shape the narrative that binds the artifacts and exhibits together in a cohesive history for visitors to experience. As a means for educating the public on histories, museums have harnessed emotions in a variety of manners, each with their own functions and implications. This paper examines three texts from three different authors writing on this topic. Jacque Micieli-Voutsinas' analysis of the 9/11 Memorial Museum will be used to discuss how the museum fashions emotion to immerse visitors in the day's events and then turns this emotion toward a visualized perpetrator. Research on the Tenement Museum in New York provided by Davina M. Desroches will then be discussed, particularly how the organization's practices contradict the affective experience within the museum. I will then conclude with a discussion of Amy K. Levin's concept of precarious knowledge, which describes the risk of adverse reactions to learning about painful and traumatic events in a museum setting. Writings from scholars working more directly with affect theory are also pulled into the discussion, including Sara Ahmed, Arlie Russell Hochschild, and Natalie Kouri-Towe. This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing discussion of affect in museums. By providing three succinct examples of how affect operates within museums, this paper serves as a theoretical starting point for future research for those working within the field of affect as well as individuals working within museum curation.