Katharina Lorenz

The Genesis of Iconology

Erwin Panofsky explicitly states that the first half of the opening chapter of Studies in Iconology— his landmark American publication of 1939 — contains ‘the revised content of a methodological article published by the writer in 1932’, which is now translated for the first time in this issue of Critical Inquiry.1 That article, published in the philosophical journal Logos, is among his most important works. First, it marks the apogee of his series of philosophically reflective essays on how to do art history,2 that reach back, via a couple of major pieces on Alois Riegl, to the 1915 essay on Heinrich Wolfflin.3 Under the influence of his colleague at Hamburg Ernst Cassirer, the principal interpreter of Kant in the 1920s, Panofsky from 1915

Using mobile media creation to structure museum interpretation with professional vision

Abstract Mobile technology plays an increasing role in museum and cultural heritage contexts. In most cases, these tools support the relatively passive consumption of expert interpretations, or the unguided generation of content by users. This paper explores the potential for technologies to help museum visitors, encountering unfamiliar objects, to engage with them as a skilled professional interpreter would, through structured mobile experiences that focus on creating multimedia content. We explore this concept in the area of artefact interpretation and specifically how to enact a structured process of interpretation, as would commonly be taught in courses dedicated to the analytical diagnostics of visual evidence, such as Classical Archaeology or Art History. We discuss two field trials of prototype systems through which the structured creation of multimedia forms a basis for learning to interpret historical artefacts conducted in contexts of both formal and informal learning. By describing, implementing, and evaluating this approach, we contribute understanding of a new way to conceptualise active engagement in museum contexts, through the effective use of scaffolding and user generation of multimedia. We identify issues around the properties and flexibilities of multiple media for this purpose, links between provision for procedural and factual learning, and the value of media creation-based structures in improving the skills and confidence to interpret.

Narratives of space and perspective

Image studies as experiment: the results Image studies focuses on a pictures share in negotiating – and shaping – reality, that is, on its functional aspects and the logistics of its display. At the stage of spatial analysis, the case studies demonstrate the strength of image studies in its scrutiny of the compositional design of a picture by highlighting certain features from specific viewpoints, which creates varying perspectives on the picture as an artefact. In combining elements of the syntactic assessment of semiotics with iconologys iconography, this stage appropriates these elements in a new way. While semioticised syntactics is concerned with the internal structure of a picture, and iconological iconographics with the external connection between individual motifs within the picture and other such motifs in other pictures, image studies occupies a middle ground with its consideration of the internal structures of a picture as shaped by their perception. At this stage, everything in and around the picture is under scrutiny: the elements that make the depiction as well as the empty spaces around them, both within the picture and within its immediate environment. That approach is firmly rooted in semioticised reception aesthetics, and in narratology more generally. Additionally, it emulates those interpretive mechanisms in a spatio-physical approach within which the focus is on the performativity of the picture and on what is on display at different points in the pictures use: the ‘what’ of the picture as presented through the ‘how’ of its physical display. In the case of the Karlsruhe hydria, this approach reveals any blind spots created by the heterogeneous arrangement of the two pictorial areas and considers how these areas would have been perceived whilst the pot was lifted, tilted, or turned. It also highlights the visual connections established across the two pictorial zones. With regard to the Pergamon altar, it throws into relief the compositional arrangement of the Great Frieze along the stairs and reveals the display as the endpoint of the various compositional strategies that have been devised to anchor the depiction within the sphere of its audience and that serve to create a pervasive experience of the narrative as a whole. Similarly, for the Louvre sarcophagus, the focus on spatial design establishes a specific take on narrative sequence as played out on the casket.

Gifting as a Novel Mechanism for Personalized Museum and Gallery Interpretation

The designers of mobile guides for museums and galleries are increasingly concerned with delivering rich interpretation that can be personalized to meet the diverse needs of individual visitors. However, increased personalization can mean that the sociality of museum visits is overlooked. We present a new approach to resolving the tension between the personal and the social that invites visitors themselves to personalize and gift interpretations to others in their social groups. We tested the approach in two different museum settings and with different types of small group, to investigate how visitors personalized experiences for one another, how the personalized experiences were received by visitors, and how they worked as part of a social visit. We reveal how visitors designed highly personal interpretations for one another by drawing inspiration from both the exhibits themselves and their interpersonal knowledge of one another. Our findings suggest that the deep level of personalization generated by our approach can create rich, engaging and socially coherent visits that allow visitors to achieve a balance of goals. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of our findings for personalization.