The Multisensory Museum

Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space

Edited by Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone

Recent research in the cognitive sciences gives us a new perspective on the cognitive and sensory landscape.

In The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space,museum expert Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School bring together scholars and museum practitioners from around the world to highlight new trends and untapped opportunities for using such modalities as scent, sound, and touch in museums to offer more immersive experiences and diverse sensory engagement for visually- and otherwise-impaired patrons. Visitor studies describe how different personal and group identities color our cultural consumption and might serve as a compass on museum journeys. Psychologists and educators look at the creation of memories through different types of sensory engagement with objects, and how these memories in turn affect our next cultural experience. An anthropological perspective on the history of our multisensory engagement with ritual and art objects, especially in cultures that did not privilege sight over other senses, allows us a glimpse of what museums might become in the future. Education researchers discover museums as unique educational playgrounds that allow for a variety of learning styles, active and passive exploration, and participatory learning. Designers and architects suggest a framework for thinking about design solutions for a museum environment that invites an intuitive, multisensory and flexible exploration, as well as minimizes physical hurdles.

While attention has been paid to accessibility for the physically-impaired since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, making buildings accessible is only the first small step in elevating museums to be centers of learning and culture for all members of their communities. This landmark book will help all museums go much further.

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 410 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-0-7591-2354-0 • Hardback • March 2014 • $128.00 • (£98.00)

978-0-8108-9535-5 • Paperback • October 2017 • $42.00 • (£35.00)

978-0-7591-2356-4 • eBook • March 2014 • $39.50 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Business & Economics / Museum Administration & Museology, Social Science / General

The Multisensory Museum

Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Recent research in the cognitive sciences gives us a new perspective on the cognitive and sensory landscape.

In The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space,museum expert Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School bring together scholars and museum practitioners from around the world to highlight new trends and untapped opportunities for using such modalities as scent, sound, and touch in museums to offer more immersive experiences and diverse sensory engagement for visually- and otherwise-impaired patrons. Visitor studies describe how different personal and group identities color our cultural consumption and might serve as a compass on museum journeys. Psychologists and educators look at the creation of memories through different types of sensory engagement with objects, and how these memories in turn affect our next cultural experience. An anthropological perspective on the history of our multisensory engagement with ritual and art objects, especially in cultures that did not privilege sight over other senses, allows us a glimpse of what museums might become in the future. Education researchers discover museums as unique educational playgrounds that allow for a variety of learning styles, active and passive exploration, and participatory learning. Designers and architects suggest a framework for thinking about design solutions for a museum environment that invites an intuitive, multisensory and flexible exploration, as well as minimizes physical hurdles.

While attention has been paid to accessibility for the physically-impaired since passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, making buildings accessible is only the first small step in elevating museums to be centers of learning and culture for all members of their communities. This landmark book will help all museums go much further.

Details

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Pages: 410 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-0-7591-2354-0 • Hardback • March 2014 • $128.00 • (£98.00)

978-0-8108-9535-5 • Paperback • October 2017 • $42.00 • (£35.00)

978-0-7591-2356-4 • eBook • March 2014 • $39.50 • (£30.00)

Subjects: Business & Economics / Museum Administration & Museology, Social Science / General

Author

Nina Levent is executive director of Art Beyond Sight Collaborative in New York City, part of Art Education for the Blind. Art Beyond Sight is dedicated to making the visual arts a vital part of the lives of visually-impaired people.

Alvaro Pascual-Leone, M.D., Ph.D., is professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School; Director of the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation; Program Director of the Harvard-Thorndike Clinical Research Unit; and an Attending Neurologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center — all in Boston. He is a practicing behavioral neurologist and movement disorders specialist.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Nina Levent & Alvaro Pascual-Leone

Part I: Museums & Touch
Chapter 1: Please DO Touch the Exhibits! Interactions between Visual Imagery and Haptic Perception
Simon Lacey & K. Sathian
Chapter 2: "First Hand," not "First-eye" Knowledge: Bodily Experience in Museums
Francesca Bacci & Francesco Pavani
Chapter 3: Art-Making as Multisensory Engagement: Case Studies from The Museum of Modern Art
Carrie McGee &Francesca Rosenberg
Chapter 4: Multi-sensory Engagement with Real Nature Relevant to Real Life
Molly Steinwald, Melissa A. Harding, & Richard V. Piacentini
Chapter 5: Touch and Narrative in Art and History Museums
Nina Levent & Lynn McRainey

Part II: Museums & Sound
Chapter 6: A Brain Guide to Sound Galleries
Stephen R. Arnott & Claude Alain
Chapter 7: Ephemeral, Immersive, Invasive: Sound as Curatorial Theme 1966-2013
Seth Cluett
Chapter 8: Soundwalking the Museum: A Sonic Journey through the Visual Display
Salomé Voegelin.
Chapter 9: The Role of Sensory and Motor Systems in Art Appreciation and Implications for Exhibit Design
A. Casile & L. F. Ticini.

Part III: Smell & Taste in Museums
Chapter 10: The Forgotten Sense: Using Olfaction in a Museum Context. A Neuroscience Perspective.
Richard Stevenson.
Chapter 11: The Scented Museum
Andreas Keller
Chapter 12: The Museum as Smellscape
Jim Drobnick
Chapter 13: Taste-full Museums: Educating the Senses One Plate at a Time
Irina Mihalache

Part IV: Museum Architecture & the Senses
Chapter 14: Navigating the Museum
Hugo Spiers, Fiona Zisch & Steven Gage,
Chapter 15: Museum as an Embodied Experience
Juhani Pallasmaa
Chapter 16: Architectural Design for Living Artifacts
Joy Monice Malnar & Frank Vodvarka.

Part V: Future Museums
Chapter 17: Multisensory Memories: How Richer Experiences Facilitate Remembering
Jamie Ward
Chapter 18: The Secret of Aesthetcis Lies in the Conjugation of the Senses: Reimagining the Museum as a Sensory Gymnasium
David Howes
Chapter 19: Multisensory Mental Simulation and Aesthetic Perception
Salvatore M Aglioti, Ilaria Bufalari & Matteo Candidi
Chapter 20: Islands of Stimulation: Perspectives on the Museum Experience, Present and Future
Rebecca McGinnis
Chapter 21: The Future Landscape of 3D in Museums
Samantha Sportun
Chapter 22: Technology, Senses and the Future of Museums. A Conversation with Nina Levent,
Heather Knight , Sebastian Chan and Rafael Lozano Hammer.

Conclusion
Index
About the Contributors

Reviews

From 'Please DO touch the Exhibits' to 'The Museum as Smellscape,' a new book hitting museum studies shelves this spring explores how the five sense can be engaged in cultural experiences. The Multisensory Museum unites museum professionals with psychologists, neuroscientists, architects and other specialists to examine how physical interactions influence visitors' understanding of objects and exhibitions. Special emphasis is placed on discussing how museums can reach audiences that are sensorially impaired.
— Museum

This densely researched book not only invites us to see the potential of multisensory experiences in museums, but also anchors that invitation in evidence from neuroscience that they matter. The editors are pioneers in linking these two uncommonly paired disciplines, and they make a case that is impossible to dismiss. . . .Invest time in The Multisensory Museum, and I would wager that generous insights infiltrate how you create meaningful, emotional, and satisfying experiences for everyone.
— Exhibition

Curated by Nina Levent and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, is a collection of essays that “seeks to open a dialogue between modern museum science and human neuroscience.” It mobilizes experts in various disciplines – historians, architects, anthropologists, artists, curators and cognitive and sensory studies’ researchers – to investigate current strategies in galvanizing audience engagement with museums. The result is an interesting hybrid: a narrative discourse with an axiological thrust the employs sensory and marketing studies’ applicability in the museum context. The case studies are intelligibly presented, each thematic chapter being introduced by remarks on the workings of the brain and on how it decodes information.
— Muse

The Multisensory Museum: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Touch, Sound, Smell, Memory, and Space is a book with a mission: to be a bridge between two worlds, that of cognitiveresearch and museum studies…. The book seeks to open a dialogue between modern museum science and human neuroscience.It aims to highlight today’s best multisensory practices and reflect on how newresearch and technology will influence museums in the future…. Reading the different visions and experiences in this book broadens your mind. It makes you realize that there is a world beyond the eyes. It also makes clear that, like the neuroscientists do, we (museum researchers) also have to deepen our knowledge about what is happening inside the brains of our visitors when they encounter our exhibits, our buildings, and our programs. Cooperating with cognitive scientists and conducting more experiments within the museum setting will give us more insight. It is also something we need to do: If we say we are about learning or reinforcing cognition in the broader sense we have to connect our experiences to the existing knowledge about how the brain works.
— Visitor Studies

I heartily recommend The Multisensory Museum to museum colleagues everywhere. This book is for anyone interested in learning, the process of meaning-making, and the potential of museums. Contributors range from psychologists and neuroscientists to veteran museum educators. Each offers information and ideas of immense practical value. The Multisensory Museum offers a highly informative and inspiring combination of research data, educational theory, and case studies. This collection will expand most readers’ understanding of the integrated role sensory experiences play when people find meaning in the material world.
— Linda Duke, Director of the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art

Features

Contributions by Salvatore Maria Aglioti, Claude Alain, Stephen Arnott, Elisabeth Salzhauer Axel, Francesca Bacci, Ilaria Bufalari, Matteo Candidi, Antonino Casile, Seth Cluett, Jim Drobnick, Stephen Gage, Melissa Harding, David Howes, Andreas Keller, Simon Lacey, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, Nina Levent, Joy Monice Malnar, Carrie McGee, D. Lynn McRainey, Irina D. Mihalache, Juhani Pallasmaa, Francesco Pavani, Richard V. Piacentini, Francesca Rosenberg, Krish Sathian, Hugo Spiers, Sam Sportun, Molly Steinwald, Richard J. Stevenson, Luca Francesco Ticini, Frank Vodvarka, Salomé Voegelin, Jamie Ward, and Fiona Zisch.