Digital technology is a pervasive aspect of contemporary society and its influence on narrative has been profound. In the realm of museums digital technology is significantly altering the way museums create and disseminate narrative. Using survey research, this study examines the influence of digital technology on the narrative of American art museums. By surveying museum professionals working in American art museums narrative and technological trends can be identified. This research presents three major findings. First, museum professionals identify American art museums as narrative environments. Second, American art museums are using digital technologies for narrative purposes. Third, digital technology has directly influenced the narrative of American art museums. Recommendations for further areas of study are suggested based on the findings of this research. / Department of Telecommunications

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Virginia, 1998. / Description based on content as of June 1999; title from title screen.

The Museum of Modern Art's television project sponsored by the Rockefeller Brother's Fund between 1952 and 1955 was designed to educate a democratic and cultured citizenry through the principles and practices of modern art and liberal humanism. Through a close reading of four television programs, related policy documents and exhibitions, as well as critical, educational and promotional literature, this study will show how within the context of the MoMA's mandate and history, the television project was a decisive, yet highly troubled attempt to forge cultural citizenship through the burgeoning media of modern art and television. This exploration will establish how the television project was an integral aspect of the MoMA's efforts since World War II to situate modern art as essential to the formation of an international polity shaped around the promise of universality, yet dependent on upholding the primacy of free and creative individuals. In addressing such a challenge, this dissertation will contend that television was not necessarily antithetical to modernism, rather it was just one among an array of struggling forces falling within the rubric of the modern. Moreover, this analysis will consider the importance of culture in logics of liberal governance. In order to elucidate the dimensions of cultural democracy as they emerged through the MoMA's television project, this study will be shaped around a discussion of three components crucial to the formation and maintenance of citizenly conduct---civic education, democratic cultural communications, and cross-cultural governance. To these ends, a range of sources from the disciplines of Communications, Cultural Studies and Critical Artistic Studies will be drawn on in order to investigate the provisional links forged between modern art, media pedagogy, and cultural citizenship in the Cold War period.

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