Literary heritage in museum exhibitions: Identifying its main challenges in the European context

Marina Strepetova,Jordi Arcos-Pumarola

doi:10.46284/mkd.2020.8.3.5

Abstract

Literary heritage presents a dialectic relationship between tangible and intangible elements. This complex duality presents challenges for curators, who must try to communicate this immaterial essence through the exhibition language. This article, structured on a two-phase research process, aims to identify the main challenges for literary heritage valorisation and communication in the museum context. First, interviews with specialists in literary heritage and museology from Catalonia and Russia were carried out to identify the main issues to be considered when designing a literary heritage exhibition and managing a literary heritage centre. Second, the websites of three renowned literary European museums were analysed to inspect whether and how these aspects are tackled by these museums and presented to their potential visitors. Results show that, firstly, the duality of literary heritage is vital in the designing of the exhibition; and secondly, that concepts such as human mediation, literary tourism, and promotion are important in finding new strategies to communicate and visibilise literary heritage intangible meanings.

Highlights

In 2003, UNESCO adopted its Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.1 In this document, intangible cultural heritage (ICH) was defined and brought in the cultural spotlight
This document, which shifted the interest from material heritage to ethereal cultural expressions,2 fully acknowledged the challenges that this change posed to heritage interpreta
The present paper focuses on literary heritage, which has its origins in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when attention to the territory and landscape linked to literary authors increased

Summary

Introduction

In 2003, UNESCO adopted its Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. In this document, intangible cultural heritage (ICH) was defined and brought in the cultural spotlight. We took into account the four issues identified in the interviews’ analysis, namely: the creation of literary attractions; the role of human mediation; the use of tangible and original elements in museography; and the presence of the landscape in the museum’s discourse Using this list of topics as an instrument of analysis, we examined the websites of the following three literary house museums: Shakespeare’s Birthplace, Goethe National Museum, and Maisons Victor Hugo. To our survey question on whether it is possible to visit a literary museum without any prior knowledge about the author, there was agreement among respondents that stimulating and encouraging the reading of the featured author can be considered as one of the main objectives of literary house museums In this sense, these places must give basic biographical information and aim to turn visitors into readers. This concept of creating a space that communicates biographical information, and other topics broadens the museum’s offering and may be interesting for visitors who are not familiar with the figure of the Catalan poet before their visit

The essential role of human mediation in literary house museums

The tangible side of literary heritage