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Reading between the lines: museum and gallery publications in mid-Victorian England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 June 2016

Valerie Holman
Valerie Holman*
Affiliation:
London W2 4NY, UK
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Abstract

When national museums and galleries were still a relatively new form of public institution, official policies of accessibility and popular education were frequently expressed through a sustained use of metaphor drawn from the discourse of the book. Museums became repositories of knowledge or sources of information on good design, and the visitors readers of objects. Such rhetorical devices could prove counter-productive, for they were based on assumptions, not facts, about the extent of popular literacy and the nature and diversity of reading practices, and yet this form of conceptualisation affected the form, content and quantity of early museum and gallery publications.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , 2000 , pp. 36 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © The Art Libraries Society 1981

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