Common Sense: (Re)inventing a Social and Sensory Museology of the Illustrated Book

Free event. Book here

Public lecture by CVC visiting research fellow, Professor Emilie Sitzia, Special Chair at the University of Amsterdam (Word and Image) and Associate Professor Cultural Education at the University of Maastricht, Netherlands.

An illustrated book is a multi-sensory object. We caress its cover; we smell its pages as we open it; we gaze at its images looking for minute details; sometimes, we take it to bed with us; we even (if we live dangerously) bring it in our bath. We have an attachment to illustrated books like we have with no other objects of our visual cultures.

Yet, when we exhibit the rarest and most beautiful of illustrated books, we mostly lock them up into “glass coffins”. This traditional museology of the book deactivates the book, limits the audience’s agency and damages its relationship with the audience. This lecture will investigate how multisensory and social exhibition strategies can restore the agency of the audience and of the book itself (or at least reactivate them).

The lecture will start by investigating core issues and challenges linked to the exhibition of illustrated books and other similar historical and artistic material such as illuminated manuscripts or artists’ books. We will then attempt to (re)invent a museology of the book that would allow for the sensory and social aspect of the book to re-emerge within an exhibition context.

We will first look at the process of illustrated book exhibition-making and the potential and limitations of participatory practices in addressing the social aspect of book exhibitions. We will discuss issues of inclusion and diversity, (co)creation and power, different types of knowledge and institutional barriers. We will then focus on the form of illustrated book exhibitions. In particular, we will investigate how multisensory strategies can be developed and what their impact on various audiences is. To examine this aspect, we will look at theories of learning, knowledge creation, engagement and inclusion. We will finish this session with a group discussion considering some prototypes developed for this project and some challenges encountered with such projects such as institutional change or the risks of sensory overload.

We highly recommend that the participants in the lecture join one of the drop-in sessions at the Fitzwilliam Museum on November 29th (at 11.00, 12.00, 14.30 or 15.30) to experience the issues discussed in the lecture first-hand and test multisensory prototypes in situ. Limited access, registration on site on the day.