Museums are deeply symbolic institutions that communicate complex systems of belief and value through various channels and at various levels. Thus museums function as cultural metaphors. It is hypothesized that the metaphoric properties of a museum can be discovered through the application of ethnographic and critical methods of study. This is such a study of an individual museum, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. This study was designed to gather data about the Heard and critically analyze and interpret them using metaphor as the sense-making construct to determine meaning and significance. A critical examination of the museum--its physical space, collection, exhibitions, programs, internal organization, staffing, and other human activities--is paired with data from interviews with staff, volunteers, and visitors. These data are interpreted through the application of various paradigmatic cultural metaphors. The result is a synthesis of the museum as a cultural institution, with implications for policy development at the Heard Museum and for research on similar cultural institutions. It is found that the Heard Museum is a powerfully metaphoric and symbolic structure, embodying a number of deeply-held conceptual systems that resonate at the nexus of several cultures. The findings are discussed in relationship to social and cultural changes currently taking place in America and to the methodological questions surrounding inception of the study, and conclusions and recommendations are posited, both for researchers and for museum professionals. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-03, Section: A, page: 0694. / Major Professor: Tom Anderson. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76611 |
| Contributors | Sikes, Michael., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 254 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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