Definition of interpretation

Interpretation is not just writing, or communication; it’s making a story out of all the possible, facts, themes, ideas and objects that exist. This means editing (not having to talk about everything or be comprehensive). And it means looking for interesting stories (which are quite often personal, subjective, and particular to a particular site). It might not mean producing some exhibition text, though if it does it should be well written (short simple sentences, with only one idea per sentence, clear themes).

How do you know where to start with looking for these stories? Freeman Tilden wrote the first book on interpretation and he defined it as “the work of revealing, to such visitors as desire the service, something of the beauty and wonder, the inspiration and spiritual meaning that lie beneath what the visitor can with his senses perceive”.

That is, if we think something is special, we want other people to see why we think its special; we want to convey our enthusiasm. It’s similar to explaining to someone why you love a book or a piece of music. You wouldn’t tell them absolutely every fact about it. Instead, you’d think of the things you particularly liked and choose from these some things that you think they would like too, and you’d tell them in a way that you’d hope would interest them and inspire enthusiasm.

This means that writing is a form interpretation can take, not what it is. For instance, a sculpture could help convey the beauty of a landscape, or a film could help convey something of the reality of a political situation that would be difficult to put across in words.

Interpretation of heritage

What is heritage? Its things from the past that are selected as worth conserving because someone thinks they’re important. For instance, objects, a building, a way of life, a dance. In other words, the very fact of them becoming ‘heritage’ is an act of selection, and interpretation helps explain this act of selection; explains why someone thinks these things are important, and tries to convince other people to agree.

In other words, the starting point is ‘why should I care?’, and the hope is that interpretation will convince people of the value, maybe even encourage them to conserve, and add a depth of understanding and interest. This means it can be partly educational or informative or promotional – but only as a by-product of the main task of conveying enthusiasm.

Why do we collect things?

So, heritage can be seen as things that are selected as worth saving because someone perceives them as having value. But – are things protected because they are valued or valued because they are protected?

There are many ideas and theories about why we as people and museums as institutions collect things. One is that they are in part souvenirs (that is, nostalgic or a container for memory), in part talisman (that is, they represent or store meaning), and partly a tool for quiet thought.

Or that they symbolise the people who created them (that is, for explorers and missionaries, the object becomes a symbol for exotic places they’ve visited once brought back to their drawing room).

Or that they are symbolic of the collector; that is, collecting is a search for our own identity.

Or that they accumulate meanings as time passes, and that this is an interactive process between object and viewer. Susan Pearce has studied the meanings of an infantry officer’s jacket from the battle of Waterloo that is in the National Army Museum. It has very personal meanings (it belonged to Lieutenant Henry Anderson and the museum also has a letter from Anderson which describes the moment he fell in battle, wearing the jacket). That is, it’s partly a souvenir that Anderson kept. It’s romantic – for Anderson who kept it, it probably represented a more exciting time of life (he was promoted very slowly and spent the rest of his life in desk jobs). It sums up a particular moment in history. It’s a validation (it bears out the truth of what Anderson said about his war).

Or that they help us make sense of the large scale (which can be incoherent and confusing), through the small scale and personal.

The relevance of all this to interpretation is that we may not be particularly interested in the battle of Waterloo – or in Anderson and his moment of glory – but, despite this, people tend to be fascinated and excited by the presence of an object that is a real, physical souvenir of the past. People feel it as a direct and almost ghostly connection to the foreignness of the past. It is eerie and fascinating because it is out of place, is real and physical, and was touched by someone long dead. A long dead person who had passions, frustrations and ordinary preoccupations that compared to our own.

That is, is the role of interpretation to convey the curator’s enthusiasm, or to explore this relationship between the individual visitor and the physical object?

The impact of the environment

What is more, the museum directs our experience of objects even before the interpretation begins. How we display something, and the act of displaying it, changes our experience of something. The American artist Fred Wilson did an experiment where he placed the work of three emerging American artists within three different contexts – a white cube, an ethnographic museum and a turn of the century museum – and concluded that the white cube diminished their emotional intensity, the ethnographic room set made them seem exotic, and the turn of the century museum set gave them an authority.

The floor plan

The museum environment effects our personal interpretation. The floor plan in an art gallery tends to be arranged chronologically and divided into Western Art and ethnographic art, encouraging us to accept uncritically theories of progress towards a pinnacle of genius in the Renaissance (and to think of ethnographic art as simple or primitive).

Authenticity

We’re also encouraged by the museum to buy into ideas about the importance of the physicality of objects and art. Despite the conservation difficulties in displaying the Mona Lisa, it is the small oil painting, behind air conditioned glass that we queue up to see – and fail to see very well. Would it really matter if it was a fake? Umberto Eco has done some writing on this; if a fake is of similar technical quality, what are we looking for in the original? There is also a lot of research been done into how people experience objects that are fascimiles – and if they don’t they’re fake, they still feel an ‘aura of authenticity’.

Conservation

We’re encouraged to see everything in a museum as immortal, yet however careful the conservation, objects made of organic matter can’t last forever. Why does it matter if they don’t last? Despite Dan Flavin’s proclaimed dislike of the longevity of art, and his choice of mass produced fixtures and light fittings for his fluorescent light sculptures, museums are now worrying about how to replace them when the bulbs blow. Since US companies stopped producing the bulbs, the Flavin estate has started producing the bulbs to Flavin’s specifications and supplying them (for a price).

Implications for interpretation

The point is that these are all theories (not facts) which we’re encouraged to buy into uncritically – this is a part of the museum’s interpretation of its objects, as much as a graphic panel is. The museum is staffed by people who are trained to see the importance their collections in terms of conservation, authenticity, and the progress of Western Art and the otherness of non Western art. So these values – which we may or may not agree with – are part of the enthusiasm that the museum is trying to convey to us. Should we comply?

Seduction

The Museum uses seduction to frame our experience and interpretation of its objects; that is, we can’t touch so we want to. “Try not to concentrate on what you can’t touch. That’s the museum’s game, its seduction” (Mary Beard and John Anderson’s leaflet for the ‘?’ Exhibition at the Ashmolean 1991). What happens when you give people permission to touch something? Everyone touches it regardless of how inherently tactile it is. (The papier mache lion in the Horniman Museum; a piece of moon rock in the Space Museum in USA).

Ritual

Mary Douglas did some work on ritual and how it focuses our attention by framing it, and how it changes our perception by changing the selective principals. That is, the ritual of the museum visit directs our understanding and interpretation of their collections. Changing the selective principals is really what intepretation does deliberately – but should interpretation take into account the fact that the museum is on a less direct level influencing us?

Good interpretation conveys someone’s enthusiasm by turning it into a good story, but nevertheless visitors are guided in many less overt ways into an uncritical response that can be paralysed by awe. The excited relationship between a visitor and the eerie invocation of a ghost by a real physical object is the key to converting this into passionate curiosity.