ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some examples which serve to illustrate the ways in which museum spaces can facilitate a more meaningful museum experience by incorporating elements that work to engage audiences beyond the visual realm utilizing touch, taste, and smell. Anyone who has visited a museum is familiar with the ubiquitous – and sometimes aggressive – no-touch policy. Museums have adopted a variety of methods for facilitating tactile encounters with collections in how they construct exhibit spaces and what they choose to include within the space. Museums have begun to explore the potential for meaning-making by developing carefully curated taste experiences within or in addition to their exhibit spaces. The Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana, "examines and celebrates all the cultures that have come together through the centuries to create the South's unique culinary heritage". Museum cafe has begun to undergo reinterpretation as an integral contributor to meaningful engagement with a museum's subject matter.
