Introduction

This chapter seeks to move beyond those limitations and reports the findings of 4,502 interviews with visitors to 45 different history and culture museums and heritage sites in the United States, Australia and England. Museums and heritage sites do not have social impact without their audiences; there is an interrelationship between the work that museums and heritage sites do in constructing and telling stories and histories and how they are then understood and used by visitors. Visitors often used the language of learning to lend authority to the heritage meanings they were themselves re-creating or performing by their visit, but these meanings were not learnt; rather, they were brought to the site they were visiting for validation. In developing the idea of the performative nature of heritage, the study identifies several different heritage performances in which people engage. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.