“Pure Land”: Inhabiting the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang

This article examines two exhibition installations that integrate high‐resolution digital archeological datasets (photography and 3D architectural models) with immersive, interactive display systems. These analogous installations, Pure Land: Inside the Mogao Grottoes at Dunhuang and Pure Land: Augmented Reality Edition, allow visitors to engage in different ways with a full‐scale augmented digital facsimile of Cave 220 from the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Mogao Grottoes, Gansu Province, northwestern China. The peerless treasuries of paintings and sculptures at Dunhuang are extremely vulnerable. Comprehensive digitization has become a primary method of preservation at the site. The digital facsimiles of this cultural paragon can be transformed, providing formative personal experiences for museum visitors. The Pure Land projects contribute to new strategies for rendering cultural content and heritage landscapes. Interpreting these installations through the lens of phenomenology and panoramic immersion helps situate them at the forefront of virtual heritage today.     

“Loving,Knowing Ignorance”: A Problem for the Educational Mission of Museums

In this essay, I suggest that Mariana Ortega's concept of “loving, knowing ignorance” (2006) provides a useful conceptual tool for museum practitioners who seek to advance a progressive mission. This form of ignorance assumes authority in describing and acting on behalf of a subject, even as it fails to take seriously the subject's self‐knowledge and agency. While Ortega initially coined this term to describe the stance of white feminists toward women of color, here I extend the concept to describe a wider range of knowers—in this case, the institutional museum. Using a case study at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston to illustrate this problem, I will suggest that becoming aware of instances of loving, knowing ignorance and learning to avoid it is a key skill for museum professionals who hope for their institutions to fulfill their educational mission in a diverse and democratic society.     

Thinking about “Scenes”: A New View of Visitors' Influence on Museums

Abstract Sociologists have described “scenes” as voluntary social groupings or figurations that are “… thematically focused cultural networks of people who share certain material and/or cognitive forms of collective stylization,” according to Hitzler, Bucher, and Niederbacher (2001, 20). This terminology is quite useful for thinking about Stephen Weil's assertion that visitors play a role in shaping museums. Through “scenes,” we see how this might happen, and how visitors might already be exerting subtle pressure on the forms and contents of museums. The study of scenes could help us develop a tool that would offer a unique vision of the influences that visitors have on museums.     

Terminology deconstructed: Phenomenographic approaches to investigating the term “information”

Although considerable attention has been focused on information users in recent years, little phenomenographic research into the word “information” has been conducted, perhaps because cursory consideration may suggest that work of this type is less useful than explorations of areas such as information-seeking. The lack of an established methodological framework discourages inquiry and, if understandings of the term are unique to each individual, there seems little scope to develop even broad principles for practice. Nevertheless, phenomenographic research helps professionals to learn how far users’ attitudes to the term “information” are consistent with their own and can reduce confusion between information providers and their clientele. Despite the absence of an accepted framework, several individual techniques are available. Ultimately, the research findings may prove highly instructive. They may, for example, influence the use of the word “information” by professionals when they interact with clients, whilst also offering insights into information behavior and information worlds.