ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which readers of museum books make use of their acquisitions. The theoretical understanding of how both museum visitors and readers consume texts is derived from their joint basis in understanding audiences. Studies of media texts such as television programmes—for example, David. Hall’s studies of televisual communication—helped define initial concepts of communication with mass audiences. When visitors enter a museum they experience a complex spatial and textual landscape. Free pamphlets, wall labels, in-gallery text, and QR codes to online information and in-gallery access to collection databases offer a hierarchy of textual and visual resources from which visitors form meaning. A conundrum lies at the heart of museum exhibition design. A desire is apparent to move beyond the ‘orderly visualism of reading—inherent in the library and book analogues to a less directed and multi-sensory approach’ as presaged by Peter. Vergo’s new museums.
